


But It Can Be Won

by odetteandodile



Series: This Soldier Knows [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky's war experience, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Found Family, Happily Ever After, Howling Commandos - Freeform, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soldier homecoming angst, WWII era, nobody falls and nobody crashes any planes, okay now for the good news, so much pining, super fluff ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile
Summary: After the war Bucky does his best to put his own tattered pieces back together. But eventually he has to recognize that Steve took the most important piece with him when he left Bucky for a farm in Washington State--going there to retrieve it is the most daunting challenge he's faced yet.This is a Bucky POV companion fic to So I Took a Faithful Leap. This can be read on its own but you might want to start with that one first!(Featuring: Bucky's private war, Peggy Carter again being a boss, the Howling Commandos, Steve's dogs, and a whole giant scoop of Found Family to top it all off and make the tears along the way worth it).





	But It Can Be Won

**Author's Note:**

> If you've ever watched Band of Brothers (and if you haven't seriously please do this for me, for YOURSELF) you'll notice that this fic has even more homages than the last thanks to Bucky having a much more traditional experience of WWII before Steve rolls up. If you've watched it as obsessively as I have and catch some of the references PLEASE tell me in the comments, it will make me so happy. 
> 
> However, BOB knowledge unnecessary for enjoyment so read on :) 
> 
> Btw the titles for these fics and the series name comes from Ingrid Michaelson's [Soldier](https://open.spotify.com/track/6Vn8yNIq77aPZMBddLNLbg?si=HFuhKa4eTjqIa1CiS8HNkw) which I highly recommend.

**December, 1945**

For every day that it seemed like the war would never be over, for every minute of lost sleep and every lost friend, for each endless hour of fighting, it still comes as a deep surprise when the whole thing actually ends. 

Probably, Bucky thinks, the fact that he never expected to see the finish is why he wasn’t prepared for what it would actually look like when he got here. 

But he’s absolutely certain that he never would’ve pictured it looking like Steve walking away from him, boarding a plane bound for some place he’s never seen across an ocean and too many thousand miles. 

Or Bucky just _letting him_. 

Steve turns to him, bag in hand, with a pained expression on his face. He was never going to be a great poker player, but Bucky knows it’s especially true that Steve can’t keep anything off his face where Bucky is concerned. 

The expression looks good on him. He still manages to look up at Bucky from under his fringe of long eyelashes somehow, even though he’s taller now. The day is a frosty grey, clouds full of rain framing Steve’s square, upright figure and the blocky little airplane behind him. 

Bucky likes to think he fares a little better in this department. At least, in this moment he prays to god that’s the case. There are so many things he won’t or can’t say, and he hopes they aren’t written across his forehead now, thwarting him. He forces a smile. 

“Well Cap.” He glances back at the plane, and Steve in civies looking like the end of the world. “End of the line, huh?”

The words are out before he can really think about them, and the weight of having used that expression in particular settles hard in the pit of his stomach. He knows they hit Steve too, his eyebrows snapping together and eyes going to the ground. 

There’s a heavy silence where Bucky can see the vein ticking at Steve’s temple. He should say something—try to take back those words and what they imply, the weight of _goodbye_ in them that just saying goodbye could never carry on its own. 

Steve looks back up, and shakes his head. “No. Not for me.” 

And Bucky can feel his heart reinflating, fast and painful like a balloon against his ribcage. He pulls Steve into a hug before he does something dumb like cry. But when Steve says something like that, in that tone of iron-willed conviction, Bucky can’t help but believe him. Even if he can’t see beyond this moment, can’t imagine where this ends if not here. Steve can see it, and that’s always been enough for Bucky before. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Bucky says, instead of any of the number of other things crowding up against his teeth and at the back of his throat. Things like _I’m too scared to let you down_ , and _I wish I could be what you need_ , and _please want me like I want you_.

He waits for Steve to say something back like he always has, about leaving all the stupid here with Bucky or whatever dumb banter they’ve worked out over the years. 

Instead he says, “You know where to find me, Buck. When you want to.” 

And then he’s gone, disappearing into the small plane. 

And Bucky turns away quickly, so he doesn’t have to watch as it gets smaller and smaller, taking Steve with it. 

Knowing where to find Steve isn’t the problem. It never has been. Crossing the chasm that opens between them when they’re sitting in the same room is. Crossing it, or flinging himself down it and hoping that Steve is there to catch him if he’s ever finally be brave enough to try. 

It’s better this way. He feels safer with an ocean and a continent between them, removed from the temptation to burn the whole thing down and see what’s left standing at the end. 

Safer, sadder, and oh so relentlessly alone. 

*

**November, 1945**

“Well happy fucking VH day boys!” Bucky crows, moving to pull the darts from where they’re embedded in the board, as Morita and Dernier groan. “Who’s next?”

“C’est ne pas juste!” Dernier exclaims, handing over the bet money anyway, because he’s a sport. 

“Yeah man,” Morita agrees, “you’re a sniper, how is this even fair?”

Bucky grins at them, taking their money and splitting it with Dugan gleefully. 

“Hey, you fellas are the ones that keep taking my bet. I’m happy to keep letting you give me your money here, call it a stupid tax…”

“Ah, va te faire foutre!” 

“What he said.” Morita looks around to see who else is waiting to play. “Jones!” he yells, “grab somebody, we’re kicking Barnes and Dugan out for bad sportsmanship!” 

Bucky jingles the coins in his pocket, smirking, “You know I think that’s a bright idea, I’ve got drinking money to spend here.” 

Morita mimes a kick at him, and he and Dugan laugh before turning toward the bar, letting them complain as much as they want. Everyone knows if they get another drink or two in Dum Dum he’ll be buying rounds for the whole bar in no time anyway, so the money doesn’t really matter. Just bragging and teasing rights. 

Bucky grabs a stool. The bartender is an older man, no nonsense and lightning fast, so he’s pushing a beer into Bucky’s hand almost at once. Bucky twirls so that his back is to the bar and bartender, facing out into the crowd. He doesn’t like having his back to people any more than he can help it these days. Dugan doesn’t sit, just leans up with his great big elbows propped on the polished wood, one foot on the rail. 

Bucky’s eyes wander, keeping tabs on who has come and who has gone since their little celebration began. He catches sight of Steve, huddled in a corner table with Falsworth of all people. He looks as stiff and uncomfortable as he usually does in these settings. Even before the serum, Steve suffered from a strange mix of insecurity and superiority about big social stuff. He was always equally convinced that nobody really wanted him there as he was that he was too good for them and could be spending his time better somewhere else. 

He looks a moment too long, Bucky knows, and he can see Dugan catching him at it in the corner of his eye, following his line of sight before he can look away. 

“He okay?” he asks, as if Bucky can read Steve’s mind or something. 

“Same as he ever is I guess.” Bucky shrugs. “It was easier when he could still get drunk, at least he’d loosen up.” 

“Shit I’d have liked to see that.” 

“Yeah, he was a real boy wonder. Would’ve had to be ready to fight your way out though. Guess that part hasn’t changed.” 

They both laugh, and lift their drinks in an ironic cheers. 

“You know what the difference is, between him and us, don’t you?” Dugan asks after another minute, taking a long pull on his beer. 

Bucky laughs, humorlessly. “Uh, super strength and a talent for trouble?”

Dugan chuckles. “Nah brother, it’s that he’s a goddamn officer—they’re all like that.” 

“Pretty sure there’s a difference between getting the job in a weird science experiment and the guys who got there through West Point, Dum Dum.” 

He shrugs, looking unconvinced. “Maybe. What do I know? I’m just telling you however he got it, he’s a Captain, and they see things different than you and me. Officers got their head in the clouds—they gotta see the whole picture from way up, it’s their job. Noncoms like you and me, we gotta walk around in it, we’re on the chessboard—when pieces get knocked off they’re our guys. Just ain’t been the same kinda war for him’s all I’m saying.” 

Bucky frowns, feeling defensive of Steve. “He got his hands dirty same as all the rest of us.” 

“Not saying different. Just saying when the dirt’s done flying, he’s already thinking of the next four things. We’re the ones gotta stay in the moment and make sure we get everybody cleaned up before we get there.”

“So what?” Bucky asks, the words still coming out more belligerent than he intends them. It’s hard for him not to get his hackles up about Steve, the old habit of protecting him runs too deep even if Steve doesn’t need it anymore. But Dum Dum pretends not to notice, maybe he just knows Bucky well enough to ignore it. 

“So alls I’m saying is this war’s been different for him than you. Makes sense if the after part is too.” 

Bucky cuts his eyes at Dugan, where he leans with his elbows on the bar, trying to read into his expression. The comment feels pointed. 

“What’re you getting at, Dugan?”

Dum Dum sighs, tipping up his stupid bowler hat back with one finger. He turns to meet Bucky’s eyes evenly with his icy blue, unblinking ones. 

“Look don’t fuck with me, okay? I was there when you got shot, was there before that too. Was there when we got caught, and you went for private time with Zola. And I was there after he turned up—” he nods in Steve’s direction, “I saw how it all changed for you. So he knew you before all this—that’s not nothin’, it’s great! But he don’t know everything you been through any more than you know really how he got like that. I know you’re always mother-hen over him and everything he’s gotta deal with, but you’ve got shit of your own you better make some time for one of these days, or else you’re gonna lose it.” 

Bucky stares back at him, surprised. “How long you been saving up that particular speech, dad?”

Dugan snorts. “Oh you know, just a little something I’ve been working on special for you.” 

It’d be nice if he were wrong. Unfortunately, there’s nothing he said that isn’t true. Bucky sighs, leaning heavily back on his elbows and closing his eyes. 

“Just feels like…well I ain’t had it any worse than any other GI, you know? Don’t know why it seems like it’s eating me up so bad. I oughtta—well there’s guys had it worse is all.” 

“Yeah, so?” Dum Dum says, bluntly. “Any of them you? You’re a good sergeant, Buck. You got a lot of those guys through that maybe wouldn’t be home now without you. But I got news—the war’s over, and being a good soldier ain’t gonna be your job much longer.”

“You saying you won’t keep me around, if I want to stay?” Dugan has been offered command of the Howlers, a battlefield commission and all, if Steve decides to leave—which Bucky is almost entirely certain he will. 

“Barnes I can’t think of anybody I’d rather have stay and help me out—and all the replacements would be lucky if you’re the one showing ’em the ropes. I’m just saying even then you can only do this for so long before you’re gonna need to stop running around avoiding yourself, same as everybody.”

Bucky looks again at the corner where Steve is sitting. Falsworth is gone now and he’s alone, head bent over his barely touched beer, looking deep in thought. 

He turns his barstool back around deliberately, so that he’s facing the same direction as Dum Dum. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a real pain in the ass?” 

Dum Dum grins, lifting his glass to drain the rest of its contents, and slamming it back on the bar. 

“Kid, you have no idea. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I’m usually also right.” 

*

**March, 1946**

The months that pass after Steve is gone are grey, grey, grey. 

If it’s not grey from the near-constant drizzle of rain, it’s grey from the soupy fog that rolls in to smother the landscape. 

Of the original Howlers, there are precious few of them who were left that chose to stay. And of those, the only one he’s known since the time before is Dugan, who has his hands full with the new command. Bucky tries to help out where he can—he knows Dum Dum counts on him, and the guys all look to him as the old-timer. But he’s having a hard time even motivating himself to learn all the new replacements names, much less be the good older brother type he knows Dugan really needs in his senior NCO. 

They drill every day now that the ranks have been filled back out by Dugan’s new recruitment choices. They probably would have anyway, but god do the new guys need it. Bucky wonders why they seem so green at first, until one of them mentions that his fucking graduation from high school was June 6th, 1944. The kid was in his damn cap and gown on D Day. Bucky had already been in Europe a year at that point. 

To be fair, that kid is a smart guy and not the worst recruit they’ve got. According to Dugan, getting the Howlers assignment is a coveted position, so he’s had his pick. There’s a reason each of them made it. 

It’s just hard for Bucky not to wish that the smart, knifelike little man who’s fluent in French, German, _and_ Russian was Gabe Jones instead. 

Or that the drawling Texan who trained in engineering at Boston University were Morita, even if he can take apart and rebuild their whole comms station in under an hour from memory. 

He can even bring himself to miss Falsworth, that aloof son of a bitch. He may have been a snob, but he never looked at Bucky like he knows why the sun rises and sets. And Bucky feels like he could use a dash of that lack of admiration right now. 

It takes him straight back to those early days, back in the 107th in Italy. To Conti, his first foxhole mate, and all the other kids just like him that looked to Bucky as their NCO like that fucking meant something. Like it didn’t just mean he’d been a little better with his gun, a little faster on runs, a little more awake in strategy trainings than the rest. For that, they’d plucked him out of basic and promoted him. So when shit got heavy the fellas looked to him. Only when they’d given him his stripes they hadn’t managed to also give him the answers to all the questions he saw in the boys’ eyes when they looked to him for guidance. Go figure.

There’d been plenty of boys who’d died next to him, whose mother’s he’d written to, whose dog tags he’d collected. But before that, they were boys who he’d laughed with around fires, helped dig foxholes, and asked after sweethearts. It mattered to him that he’d done both, even if now those faces frequent his dreams—alive and dead. 

It’s why he’s still here—or so he tells himself. Training these kids as best he can so they don’t get themselves killed the first time they step on the field. Especially without Steve around drawing the heavy fire. He’s not exactly sure where the Howlers are going to be sent now that Hydra is finished, but Bucky figures it’s best to be prepared for anything. 

(If sometimes he feels paralyzed himself in Steve’s absence, unable to imagine going anywhere new alone, knowing he shouldn’t go to where Steve is now, and hating being here without him, he doesn’t dwell on it). 

So it’s muscle memory now, as he walks up a cobbled street toward his quarters, to turn with a smile when he hears someone call _Sarge!_ Even if a smile had been distinctly lacking the moment before. 

It’s one of the new guys who called to him—though that’s not exactly right, he realizes. To Bucky he’s one of the new guys, but he was actually one of the first new replacements the Howlers took on when they got back to England. He’s even been on a mission or two, which is more than most of them. 

From the looks of it, his status as king of the newbies has collected him a bit of a following, and that makes Bucky smile for real. That’s good, they need to need each other like that. When you’re in a foxhole or making an assault with artillery coming down, you want to know the guy next to you has your back. 

Bucky saunters toward the little cluster of guys, hands in his pockets. They’re spending their free afternoon playing basketball with a rigged up hoop. 

“Hey fellas,” Bucky says with a grin, “whadya hear, whadya say?”

“Hiya Sarge,” says the one who called out after him. Stelinski is the name, but Bucky’s pretty sure the guys all call him something else, something silly like…Dink. He’s almost positive they call him Dink. 

“You boys getting up to trouble out here?” Bucky asks gamely, looking around at the group to take note of who’s here. It’s always helpful to know who’s close with who. Who would want to know if someone gets hit in the field, and who he should keep an eye on if someone dies. 

They’re eager, like puppies, and he can tell they’re all equal parts impressed and horrified that Dink had the guts to call him over. It’s sweet, that. But he likes for them to feel like they can talk to him, so he settles in for a little chat. Some bonding shit. 

He leans back against a low wall, and shakes out a pack of cigarettes, offering it around. Dink takes one immediately, and two of the others—Bucky thinks hard for a moment and comes up with the names Stone and Goldberg, nickname Goldie—exchange a look before accepting as well. The last guy, the newest one and the one who seems most freaked out that Bucky is sitting there, doesn’t take one. Bucky winks at him. 

“That’s probably a good call, kid. If Captain America doesn’t smoke probably means none of us oughtta either.” He takes a long, theatrical drag on his cigarette and blows it out. “Course that’s never stopped most of us, but you could be the one to set the example.” 

They all laugh, a little nervously, delighted at the irreverence. Bucky learned a while ago that dropping Steve’s sobriquet is a real easy way to get the new ones to open up. 

Sure enough, there’s another significant exchanged look. Bucky knows the expression—they’re trying to sort out who’s going to ask him whatever it is they’ve been wanting to ask about Steve. (Is it true he never sleeps? That he once threw his whole motorcycle through a fortification? That he can bend the gun off a tank with his hands?) He’s betting it’s going to be Dink who gets the job, but he wouldn’t put it past Stone, who has a particularly bright-eyed eagerness to him. Precocious, that’s the word for him. 

But sure enough, Dink clears his throat in what he probably thinks is a casual way. Bucky smiles a little, waiting for it. 

“So uh—Sarge.”

“Yeah Dink?”

Dink’s face lights up at Bucky calling him by his nickname, and it seems to give him the last bit of confidence he needed. He sets a foot up on the wall by where Bucky’s leaning, elbow on his knee. 

“It true you once used Cap’s shield to keep from gettin’ blasted by a Hydra gun?”

Bucky’s easy expression falters, just for a moment. It wasn’t the question he was expecting—usually they want to know about Steve. 

“Aw fellas, who’s been running around telling tall tales huh?” he jokes, though he knows who it was of course. Only two other people on that train, and Steve wouldn’t have told that story. Jones was a chatty drunk. 

“So—didya?” it’s Stone who asks, eyes intent. 

Bucky sighs, stretching his legs out in front of him, buying another moment to decide how to play it with a drag on his cigarette. It’s unexpected, being reminded of that day like this. Like he’d done something bold and admirable instead of come as close to dying as he thinks he ever did in the whole goddamn war. It’s one of the moments that plays itself most frequently in his nightmares, and in those he always falls. He still doesn’t know how he didn’t. 

“You guys know what Cap’s shield is made of?” he asks. 

“Vibranium,” responds Goldie quickly. “Strongest metal on earth.”

“Yeeah,” Bucky drawls, “it’s strong alright. Don’t even budge when something hits it. You know what does though?”

There’s a chorus of obliging whats. 

“ _My_ scrawny ass, standing behind it, getting blasted with Hydra shit! Might not have exploded, but that thing rocketed me down a whole train car.” 

He says it like it’s a punchline, spreading his hands and inviting them to laugh at the picture he paints. 

“Yeah boy! You better believe I had new respect for my good old pal Steve after that day, turns out the guy really is just a brick wall. Guess that’s why they put him in charge—he had the shield sure, but he could also stay on his fuckin’ feet behind it!”

It’s even true, he had ended that day with new respect for Steve—his strength, and also his stupid bravery that saved Bucky’s life. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, just the most dramatic. 

“Damn Sarge, can’t believe you really just picked up the shield!”

“Yeah, well.” Bucky stands up, brushing dirt from the wall off of his pants. “Nobody ever accused me of having too much common sense. You guys be good you hear? No unnecessary destruction of property and all that jazz. London already got blitzed pretty good without you yahoos adding to the mess.” 

They all laugh and assure him they’ll behave, and Bucky gives them another wink before ambling off in the direction he’d been headed originally. 

He waits until he’s around a corner out of sight before he lets his shoulders slump, and releases the panicky breath that’s been pushing on his lungs.

*

**July, 1945**

They’re half way through their war with Hydra—though they of course don’t know it at the time. Tonight, it simply feels as if the beginning of the thing is a long time ago, and the end of it still isn’t in sight. It’s been a hard day of fighting, smashing up the latest base as best they can.

The strangest thing about fighting Hydra, in Bucky’s eyes, is how oddly civilized their weaponry always seems. Honestly, compared to the shit the Howlers use it just doesn’t jive. When a Hydra gun hits a guy, they just sort of vanish—there’s a blue flare and then nothing. He’s just gone. 

When a bullet from his M1 makes contact with a guys’ skull (because Bucky can almost always get the headshot) it…well it isn’t like that at all. It makes a fucking mess. God knows he’s seen it enough times. 

It’s confusing, is all. He knows they’re the bad guys—has been very much on the receiving end of their evil efforts to be convinced of that. It just seems like they’re on to something with the guns. Probably the best thing about fighting Hydra instead of jerries is how if a Howler gets hit, they don’t have to go try and get his body after, see what it was that tore him up. There’s just a clean empty space where he used to be. They can mourn for him without having to collect the pieces of him that are left over first. 

Bucky’s had to get real comfortable with the damage he can do, damage he inflicts faster and more accurately than anyone else on the team. Which he isn’t proud of, exactly. Of all the things he ever wanted to be the best at, killing folks wasn’t one. But he guesses he can’t regret it either, if him being able to put a bullet into an enemy skull means a Howler doesn’t get hit that’s what he’ll do, and he’ll do it best he can. It’s not in his nature to be anything but the best if he has the ability to do so. 

Bucky rubs his eyes, and tells himself to cool it. He’s tired, bone tired, and it’s making him too fucking philosophical for his own good. This is the kind of thing he tries not to spend too much time thinking about. If he had any energy at all, he’d go sit by the fire now, shoot the shit with whoever is awake to help him pull his thoughts back onto safe ground. But he’s practically stumbling back into the circle of their little camp as it is. 

Usually, he’d have stayed up for the first watch with Steve. Steve always insists, when they’ve had a hard fight like today, that he can keep a look out by himself. But Bucky knows he’s not as immune to needing rest as he pretends to be, even with all his new strength. So Bucky always makes sure someone stays up with him. Most of the time he just does it himself, though tonight he’d let Jones convince him not to. While Jones had been at the back of the action on the radio, Bucky had been in the thick of it today. They’d had to fix bayonets at the end there, for chrissake. 

So he lets himself be given a night off of Steve duty, and crawls wearily into his sleeping bag. None of them had bothered to get out tents or anything, just found soft patches of ground and flopped down. It’s kind of nice, actually. The grass is soft and thick underneath him, better than his camp bedroll even, and there’s a smell of flowers in the breeze dancing across his face. He closes his eyes and imagines letting the fresh air blow behind his eyes and take away the images of everything that’s happened today. He’s so weary. 

But he doesn’t fall asleep right away, for all that every cell seems to be screaming for it. He’s drifting, but wakeful, almost like his body is so strung out it can’t actually accept he’s finally offering to give it what it needs. 

He watches the stars move overhead, caught in the branches of the trees. It feels like he’s just blinking slowly, but each time he reopens his eyes the sprawl above him is a little changed. 

Eventually the low sound of voices filters in hazily through his dimmed senses. It’s the French that catches his attention first, he realizes, still unfamiliar and novel sounding even though he hears Jones and Dernier chattering back and forth often enough. Then he realizes it’s partially the oddity of realizing that while one half of the conversation is Jones as usual, the other voice is Steve’s. 

A small corner of his mind that should be far too tired to be churning away at this moment still manages to conjure a brief image of Steve speaking French. The thought of those purring consonants in Steve’s low tones makes a little too much of an impression before he can shove it away. 

Bucky shifts, just slightly, trying to catch what the two are saying. Steve’s voice is a deep rumble. It’s funny, for all the things that have changed about Steve, his voice isn’t one. It was always deep and commanding, even back when it was coming from a ribcage half the size it is now—Bucky figures it was always just filled with conviction even before the super solider upgrade. 

He frowns. He’s pretty sure Steve just recited poetry. How about that. 

Steve says something else that Bucky doesn’t catch, and Gabe laughs. 

And maybe he shifts as he does, because when he speaks again Bucky can hear clearly. He’s asking Steve what he’s going to do if they make it home. And Bucky is now even more interested in the conversation. He eases down the top of his sleeping bag to listen better unobstructed. 

It’s a question neither of them have been able or willing to ask each other. Bucky has no idea what he would say if Steve finally does ask him. _Where you go I’ll go, where you stay I’ll stay_ doesn’t seem like a suitable response. Even if it’s the only one he can think of off the top of his head. But he’s equally afraid of Steve’s answer as he is of his own. 

Gabe is asking him about bloodied threads, the threads of who he was before that have been changed by war. It may be a poetic turn of phrase, but it sours Bucky’s stomach thinking of things like that. Like everything has to be tainted by all of _this_. He’s always half hoped that if he made it out, he could go home and let it fade from his memory like a bad dream.

“Sometimes that feels like all I’ve got,” Steve tells Gabe. “Hard to remember anything I had before all this that I could still go back to.” 

And that’s the worst of all. Because of course Steve wouldn’t let himself forget…he won’t let himself just go home happily and pretend he’s never seen all the things he’s seen. He’d rather burn the world down than compromise like that. 

Because that’s the thing that most people don’t understand about Steve Rogers—he’s full of anger. The source of his goodness isn’t something gentle and easy and nice—it’s a fire, a constant burn that drives him to do better and be better. Because you don’t get to be so good and noble and wanting to do what’s right without a haunting sense of everything that’s wrong. 

But where does that leave Bucky? How can he go home and slip back into the old comfortable channels of his life if the old comfortable channels don’t exist without Steve? 

If Steve is untethered, then so is Bucky. It’s a thought that he can’t or won’t examine closely for the whys. It simply is. 

And it’s the thought that pulls him from his sleeping bag as soon as he hears Jones leave the circle of firelight, moving on instinctively silent feet toward where Steve sits now alone by the low fire. 

Bucky gets a kick out of the start Steve gives when he drops down beside him. 

“Fucking _Christ_ Barnes,” he snaps just above a whisper, “don’t you make any noise anymore?”

“I’m a trained sniper now, punk. Stealth is my middle name.”

They bicker back and forth for a few moments, Steve elbowing him in the ribs when Bucky laughs at him. It’s nice, familiar. Something Bucky can do without thinking about it. Feels like the only other things he knows how to do by rote like that now involve his M1, and he doesn’t want to think too hard on that. 

Their back and forth subsides into silence, but it’s a warm silence. Steve is sitting near enough that their shoulders are brushing, both of them looking into the fire with their knees drawn up and arms resting on top. 

Bucky wonders if Steve is still thinking about what Jones asked. About how there’s no way back for him. 

He wants desperately to say something—what, he isn’t sure. To make it better, or change his mind maybe. Bucky just can’t stand the thought of Steve thinking _this_ is all there is for him. _He_ needs this to not be all there is for either of them. 

For some reason, his heart speeds up as he tries to form the words. It’s beating fast and hard like it does when he’s lining up a particularly tough shot, sending adrenaline to all his nerves so that he’s hyper aware of every sensation—the crackle of the fire, the warmth of Steve’s shoulder where it presses into his, the texture of the dirt under his boots even. He swallows, pushing away the feeling, and turns his head to speak close to Steve’s ear. Bucky doesn’t want anyone else having a part in this conversation, even just by overhearing. 

“You’re wrong, you know.” Is all that he manages to say. 

“Hmm?” Steve asks, turning his head a little, too, his eyes sliding sideways to Bucky. Bucky realizes they’ve been sitting long enough in the quiet that Steve doesn’t know what he’s talking about—the thought wasn’t a continuous line for him. 

“You’re not that different—from before.” He needs Steve to know this, to understand what he means…but at the same time Bucky has become distractingly aware of their bodies’ positions. Their faces are nearly cheek to cheek as he speaks into Steve’s ear. Once he would have smiled at the closeness, would have wondered if this was the time Steve would finally close the distance and make this thing real, certain that sooner or later it was inevitable. But that inevitability vanished with peacetime, and now the hanging question mark over them is only painful. 

Steve is laughing at him. Or scoffing, rather, and Bucky drags his focus off the slight shadowing of stubble along Steve’s jaw to focus. 

“I don’t mean all this,” he says, quickly glancing down Steve’s tall figure to make his point. “I mean who you _were_ before. It’s the same. It’ll be the same when you go back.” 

He’s trying to convince himself, as much as he is Steve. And he isn’t sure which one of them doubts it more. Bucky believes the part about Steve being the same in the important ways, believes it from the bottom of his heart. Believes it like he needs it to survive, otherwise what might somebody see now if they looked inside of him?

And he wants Steve to believe it too. He wants Steve to think he can go back, so they can both go back. 

But Steve isn’t taking the bait. He laughs bitterly at the idea that he could go home to the same job, live on their old street and go unnoticed, and Bucky knows he’s right—knows it’s true, and that’s what hurts so much. 

“How am I supposed to go back and fit this—this body—into that life, when the whole reason they gave it to me was to go to war?”

Bucky doesn’t have an answer to that. And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? If he had an answer for Steve he might have one for himself. But he feels the lie he’s made for himself crumbling under Steve’s blunt conviction. 

Neither one of them can go home in a body that’s trained to kill and expect it all to feel the same. Some days he feels like all he is is an extension of his rifle, and a rifle has no place in peacetime. 

Neither one of them can just go back to their two-bit apartment and jobs on the docks, to just making do as if that was the best they could hope for. Back then all Bucky ever needed to outdo himself was a few extra bucks in his pocket and a bright idea for how to spend a Friday night. 

But these are not those days anymore. He’s so much better and so much worse than he ever dreamed of being before. He’s Captain America’s friend and confidante. He’s a ruthless killer.

He doesn’t know if Steve realizes that he’s pronounced a sentence over both of them. 

“You think you’re the only one who feels like that?”

He looks at Steve, and all the muscles in his face have gone stiff. Bucky wants— _God_ he wants Steve to say something, to absolve him, to understand him, _something_. Maybe, if Steve says that they’re the same, at least, he can figure out what to do with the dam of guilt he’s been holding back without drowning underneath it. He’s tried so hard not to acknowledge that it’s there at all, not to let it keep him from doing what the men need him to do…if Steve would just see him maybe that would be enough. 

Steve’s face is hurt and beautiful in the firelight. Bucky can see him struggling with what he’s going to say, and suddenly it’s too much. Bucky can’t stand the thought that what might come next from Steve’s mouth could damn or save him and he doesn’t want either one. He just wants…

Without conscious thought, Bucky’s face tips toward Steve’s. He holds his breath and tells himself maybe he’s intending just to whisper something into his ear. 

But instead his lips brush, with only the lightest sensation, down Steve’s jaw. 

Steve’s eyes drift closed, absurdly long lashes splayed over his cheek, and Bucky hears his soft intake of breath. 

It seems to say, _if you want this, you’ll have to jump_. 

And Bucky does want it. Right now, more than anything he’s ever wanted he wants to see this through. 

But that’s the thing that most people don’t understand about James Barnes—he’s full of fear. And though fear hasn’t been enough to keep him out of war, to keep anything else in his life the way he wanted it to be, it’s enough to keep him from changing this. It’s enough to make him pull his face away from Steve’s, and move away into the dark of the field toward his sleeping bag instead of forward into whatever kissing Steve Rogers might hold. 

If Bucky is always light on his feet, it’s because he’s learned never to jump if you don’t know exactly where you’re going to land. 

*

**May, 1946**

The hazy, faded twilight in the cobblestone street wraps around Bucky as his feet hit the bottom step. He takes a gulp of the cool air, fresh from a good rain that afternoon. It’s nice after the stuffy, bright bustle of Phillips’ temporary command offices inside.

He doesn’t think too much about where he’s headed as he turns left up the street, he just wants to let himself blend into the cool, indigo evening for a while. 

Spring in England is pretty, he can’t deny that. Everything is green, even here where they’re still enough on the edges of London to be surrounded by half bombed out buildings. Anyway, it ought to be green for how much goddamn rain there is. But it smells good and clean, and the more it rains the less those ravaged shells of buildings smell like fire and fear. The Brits hardly even look twice at them anymore, hurrying along in the new business of peace and rebuilding with a frankly terrifying efficiency. 

He glances at his watch, and is surprised to find that it’s already well past nine o’clock. He still can’t get used to how late the sun has been going down as they move toward summer. The dusk lingers for hours it seems, instead of minutes, leaving a huge swathe of the evenings stranded in a sort of faded inbetween time. 

But it explains at least why the street is so quiet. 

Which is why he startles a little when a soft voice calls to him from a shadowed space between two buildings, “Where you headed, soldier?”

Bucky is just able to keep his hands from darting to the M1 that is not on his shoulder, though they do fly out of his pockets. He peers into the gloom, eyes first catching on the glowing red butt of a cigarette before he makes out Peggy Carter, sitting on a crumbling garden wall. 

His mouth twists up into a hard smirk, and he strolls toward her with something close to a swagger. “Depends. Any chance you’re finally going to let me get lucky?”

He already knows the answer, which is why he even asks. If he thought there was any chance Peggy would say yes to him at this point, he’d avoid her like the plague. Bucky isn’t really sure what it is that’s happened or happening between her and Steve, but he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it for a multitude of reasons. But since he feels safe in the expectation that she’ll always rebuff him, he doesn’t mind needling her. 

Normally she needles right back, the same kind of friendly-but-not-really edge on her that he uses. Bucky can’t blame her. She probably feels pretty much the same way about him as he does about her. 

Tonight she doesn’t come back with a quippy insult though, just sighs and takes a long drag on her cigarette. 

And Bucky hates that he notices, but he can see now that she looks less…commanding than usual. She’s sitting slumped on the wall, one arm around herself, her normally flawless red lipstick looking a little faded and her hair beginning to fall out of its victory roll. 

And they’re far enough from Phillips’ offices that she must have come here on purpose to be alone. Bucky hesitates, then relents, smirk easing up a little as he makes his decision. He knows he could—and probably should—keep walking and just let both of them have their own private sulking time. But he can’t quite do it. He thinks of Steve, and the dopey, worshipful look he’d get on his face whenever he talked about Peggy, and for some reason that look means that Bucky is walking toward her and sitting down beside her on the wall. 

“Got a light?” he asks, pulling a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. 

Peggy hands him her lighter. She takes another long drag, letting it out slowly. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

Bucky snorts. “Probably. But that’d only be if you wanted anything to do with me.” He hands back the lighter, giving her a sideways look. “What are you doing out here anyway?”

She gives a bitter laugh, stubbing out the end of her spent cigarette on the wall and shaking out another. He notes that she’s smoking Lucky Strikes, a side effect of too much time in the company of American GIs he guesses. 

“This may come as a surprise to you, but there are people I find even more insufferable than you. One sometimes simply needs a moment of peace.” 

Bucky frowns, head turning back in the direction of HQ. “Ole Chester giving you a hard time?” 

“Colonel Phillips is a decent man and a good commander, but he isn’t everywhere.” 

“So it’s those other SSR assholes? Who is it? If you want me to—” he makes a motion toward the street he’s just walked down. 

Peggy cuts him off with a shake of her head. “I thank you, Sergeant, but I don’t need rescuing. I just need a minute.” 

He settles back at once, chastened. “Of course, what was I thinking—the man-eater can take care of herself.” He says it without considering, though he realizes how harsh and how not like a joke it sounds once it’s out. 

Peggy’s retort is swift and vicious, turning on him like a fury. 

“And what exactly _should_ I be doing, sergeant? Married, couple of kids maybe? In your humble opinion, should I have quit the SSR the moment Schmidt was dead or before that? Tell me, Barnes, when _precisely_ should I have begun the process of producing offspring instead of tracking Hydra to please you?” 

Well, Bucky thinks he can guess what kind of ribbing Peggy has been getting at headquarters. And he feels guilty for having unintentionally piled on, especially when he doesn’t really mean it. Carter’s good at her job, and he’s the last person to try to tell someone what they ought to be doing with their life. 

Bucky opens and then closes his mouth on a response. What is he even going to say? It’s not like he _cares_. Peggy Carter can do whatever she wants, what’s he going to do? Go pitch a fight for her honor with some baby officers in Phillips’ command post? She can take care of herself, and it’s not like they’re friends. 

Only…Steve would do it. If he were here he’d go start whatever fights he could get his hands on if he heard they were giving her flack, whether she needed the backup or not. 

But Steve isn’t here. He’s out on a farm somewhere doing who the hell knows what and left Bucky and left his girl here to sort things out without him. 

“In any case, what are you doing wandering?” Peggy asks, clearly wanting to redirect whatever lingering protective instincts Bucky might be considering, her voice calmer. “Aren’t there some baby Howlers who’d better appreciate your mothering somewhere?”

“Ah,” Bucky says, scuffing his shoe against the wall. “Dum Dum can handle ’em.” 

But his tone must give him away, because she eyes him now, interestedly. “And you are…taking the evening off?” she prompts. 

“What should I be doing? Married, couple of kids maybe?” he parrots back at her, annoyance flaring anew. He really doesn’t want to talk about it. 

She smirks. “Mm…carousing, couple of dames feels more apt.” 

He could say something funny to that, play the wolf he always pretends to be around her. But for some reason, having her say it back to him like she actually thinks that’s who he is makes him want to explain himself, let her know that really isn’t him. Even though it doesn’t matter what she thinks. He opts for the truth. 

“I’m uh…gonna take a little leave, actually.” 

He wishes he hadn’t stopped walking. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with anyone, much less Peggy Carter, until he figures out for himself what the hell he’s doing. He’d gone into HQ intending to file his weekly reports as usual and get new assignments, and had somehow walked out on a period of indeterminate leave instead. 

Peggy looks at him thoughtfully as the end of her cigarette flares again with an inhale. Bucky looks back, trying to look as confident and casual as he can, like he knows exactly what he’s doing and where he’s headed. He doesn’t know if he pulls it off. 

“Headed stateside?” she asks, the same kind of failure to be nonchalant in her tone that he suspects is written all over his face. Bucky knows the question she means is, headed to Steve?

“Not sure yet,” he says, which is at least honest. Though he hopes it sounds more flippant and less lost than the reality. He clears his throat, dropping his cigarette to the ground and watching intently as he grinds it into the stone with his heel, as if the task requires great concentration. Then he throws his caution to the wind and asks what he really wants to know. “You uh—you heard from him? From Steve?” 

Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but she covers the expression quickly before Bucky can really decipher what it means. 

“I—yes, we correspond. He seems well, happy. Worried after the Commandos. Do you…do you want his address?”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “Nah, thanks. I got it.” 

“Oh.” She says, frowning now. “Sergeant I—do you—”

“Don’t worry about it Carter,” Bucky interrupts, not wanting to know what she’s fumbling to say. “It makes sense he writes you, I ain’t mad.” 

Because he may not have written to Steve yet, though he’s started a hundred letters, but Steve hasn’t written to him either. 

Peggy, to his surprise, heaves a deep sigh. “I’m sorry but—are you…under the impression that there’s something between Steve and I?”

Bucky’s laugh is a little mean, he can hear it, but he can’t help himself. “I’m sorry, was I not supposed to?”

“Well there isn’t, not anymore.” 

He scoffs audibly.

“I’m on the level. Believe it or not, I don’t care. It isn’t like that between us, not after…well not for some time.” 

Bucky wonders what _after_ she means. But he doesn’t ask. 

“Could’ve fooled me.” He shouldn’t be saying anything; this conversation should end right this minute. But he plunges ahead anyway. “Didn’t really ever think you kept much of a secret about how you felt about him.”

“Oh I didn’t.” She says, lightly. “The problem was rather how he felt about me. A girl can only be unrequited for so long before it starts to wear down her dignity, you know. Time to admit defeat, live to fight another day and all that.”

Bucky looks at her, incredulous—he’d seen Steve’s face when she’d walked into the Whip and Fiddle in that red dress. Though admittedly that was a long time ago now. When had things cooled off between them? How had he not noticed?

He realizes Peggy is watching his face closely, and he blanks his expression, hoping he hasn’t given away too much. He can’t read her at all, especially not now that darkness has well and truly settled in around them. 

“Neither one of us ended it heartbroken, Sergeant. I wasn’t the right partner for him is all.”

Peggy smiles, a look much softer than any Bucky has ever received from her before. 

“You should write to him, Barnes. One of you has to send the first one you know.” 

Bucky clenches his jaw tightly, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. He’s had about enough of this topic of conversation. As if he hasn’t thought about writing to Steve every night since he left. But the point is Steve is the one who left _him_ , got on a plane and flew off. He should be the one to be in touch. Bucky doesn’t know why it matters, but he’s going to be stubborn about it anyway. 

He touches his hat in a rakish, not entirely proper salute. 

“Evening, Agent Carter.” 

She doesn’t salute back, just takes another drag of her cigarette before answering. 

“Evening, Sergeant Barnes.”

He turns on his heel, slipping away into the skeletal London street. 

*

 **May, 1943**

Italy isn’t anything like Bucky pictured it would be. 

He realizes, now that they’re here, that he’d been thinking of the pictures out of his old history textbooks. But those had been pictures of the important places; Rome and Florence and Pompeii. Nothing important enough to make it into those books ever happened here precisely, though somebody told him they’re supposedly not that far from Pisa, where the famed tower still leans. He’d have liked to see that—he’d loved those history books. 

No, out here it’s just mountains and trees and Jerries. And he barely even gets to see those—more often it’s just the dirt walls of a foxhole in one place or another as they push up along the jagged line of the Apennines. 

Bucky sighs, trying to shift into a slightly more comfortable position against the dugout walls of their current foxhole without bumping into Conti’s knees. Maybe if they do this thing right, he thinks to comfort himself, this shit corner of the world will make it into future textbooks. 

Right now it doesn’t seem likely. After two months on the line they haven’t seen any of the kind of victorious, pitched battles that would make it into a newsreel or a John Wayne movie or anything like that. Just one long march after another as they push the line forward. Occasionally bloody, mostly boring. They’re currently holding position outside of a town whose name he’s completely forgotten but is supposedly important to both sides, waiting for the Germans to try and take it back. 

Conti sighs and gives a frustrated groan, letting Bucky know his attempt at letting him sleep was wasted. 

“Everything okay Sarge?”

“Peachy keen, kid. You still got two hours left before I make you spell me—you should get some shuteye while you can.” 

Conti just snorts, sitting up straighter beside Bucky, pulling his own rifle to him. 

“Ah, I ain’t getting any sleep. You wanna grab a few winks?”

Bucky shakes his head at the kid, giving him a half smile and scooting over to make room so that they can both keep their eyes on the line. He nudges his rifle up on his shoulder, resettling it. 

Conti shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

They’re quiet for a while, eyes roving the dim shadows between the trees that sprawl out before them. It had been disquieting at first, these in-between moments of fighting. Bucky knows he’s not the only one who’d spent the whole long boat ride over preparing himself for the flash and thunder and the idea of getting wounded fighting—none of them had known how to get themselves ready to wait silently for somebody to start shooting. 

But they’re pretty good at it now—have to be. 

Conti sighs again. The kid is always sighing. At just over eighteen, he’s even more at odds with the idea that most of their time here is just waiting—he’d signed up to shoot Nazis, after all. That thought makes Bucky smile again, wryly, thinking of Steve. If only Steve knew how much boring shit he was missing out on, he might have felt better about Bucky heading out without him. 

“Hey Sarge, you ever heard anything like this quiet?”

Bucky laughs. “Kid, I told you, I’m from Brooklyn. Only time Brooklyn ever seemed quiet was if I was soused.” 

“Yeeah,” Conti drawls, “same for Staten Island, ’specially with my kid brothers around. I went camping once, with my pop. He said he wanted to teach me how to fish, only it turned out he never went fishing in his life ’fore that either. We mostly ended up just drinking beer by the river somewhere upstate.” He pauses, thoughtfully. “Don’t remember it being this quiet though.” 

Bucky huffs a humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m guessing you weren’t on the opposite side of a defensive line trying to keep the fish from getting you zeroed so they could mortar you.” 

“True Sarge, this is true. Still, it’s fuckin’ creepy is all I’m saying. If I ever get back to New York I’m never leaving the city again. This is enough nature for a lifetime, ya know?” 

Bucky nods. He notes Conti’s _if_. They both know it’s entirely possible that the rest of their short lifetimes _will_ come to a close in this forest. Or in the next one, or the one after that. It’s a long way from here to Berlin. 

“I hope I get to eat at Mariano’s again before I die though.” Conti says, softly. “That’d be the first thing I do if I ever get back, besides hug my ma o’course.”

Bucky’s chest is tight, wondering what their odds are. 

“How about you?”

“How about me what?” his voice comes out a little gruffer than he means it to, but Conti doesn’t seem to mind. Bucky knows that as a Sergeant and a handful of years his senior, he must seem pretty experienced and world-wise to Conti. He feels anything but. 

“What’s the first thing you’d do stateside?”

Bucky is going to brush the question off, tell Conti he’d better get some sleep. He doesn’t think it’s good for any of them to spend too much time thinking of home, not when there’s a job to be done that won’t be ending any time soon. Talking about it just doesn’t help. 

But then instead he says, without meaning to, “I’d wanna take my friend Steve up to Chinatown, order enough Chinese food to feed the regiment. We couldn’t ever hardly afford to do it before.” 

Bucky’s surprised at himself. He could have sworn he never even let himself consider what would happen if he ever made it home. 

Surprise makes him even gruffer, and annoyed at Conti for somehow managing to spring it on him. “Go to sleep, Private. That’s an order. Plenty of time to yak when we’re marching tomorrow.” His tone brooks no nonsense, and Conti complies, though with a curious sideways look that Bucky chooses to ignore. 

Bucky tries to banish the image of Steve, across from him in one of the cracked booths at Chen’s, smiling over a table full of food that weighs more than he does. They’d gone together once before, when they’d both graduated high school with honors and their moms had been so glad they’d pooled money for them to go out. Steve had grinned ear to ear over the menu, and they’d eaten themselves sick. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time.

It seems like some guys are able to think about home, talk about it, and not have it distract them—they draw strength from it, even. Bucky wishes he could be like that. But he realized pretty quick, back on the troop ship even, before they ever landed, that he wasn’t going to be one of them. If he lets himself think about hugging his sisters, his mom’s cooking, or sitting in the park with Steve it doesn’t take long before a rising, panicky feeling in his chest threatens to flood him. He has to keep his head exactly where it is, in this moment, or he knows he’ll go crazy. 

A rustle in the trees ahead of them pushes the thought out of Bucky’s mind, adrenaline zinging through his veins momentarily as he grips his rifle. It turns out to be nothing, an animal probably, but by the time he’s realized it he’s managed to get his focus back where it should be. 

 

The next day, when a rustling comes from across the line of trees as they advance, they aren’t so lucky. 

It converges into a high pitched whistling, and they spend the next forty-five minutes taking shells. 

Afterward, when they’ve punted the enemy another few hundred yards back toward Austria, Bucky finds Conti. The kid is lying curled around his rifle, eyes wide and staring. The shell that ripped open his chest had done a number on the tree he’s fallen beside too—hundred year old oak in tattered pieces across the forest floor. The kid hadn’t stood a chance. Bucky signals to one of the guys on recovery to come get the body. 

But he remembers to take Conti’s dog tags, and the now bloodstained letter to his ma from his shirt pocket, tucking them into his own jacket. He’ll have to rewrite it before he sends them back to Staten Island…he can’t send the kid’s mom a letter with his blood on it. 

But he’ll do what he’d promised he would, this time and however many come after it. 

That night, when they dig in, he’s got a new guy sharing his foxhole. Bucky asks him where he’s from, albeit wearily, because that’s what you do. But he’s glad when the answer isn’t anywhere near New York City. 

*

**August, 1946**

After London, Bucky decides what he needs is not to think so much. 

So he walks on the beach at Cannes. 

He gambles late into the night in Monaco. 

He even goes back to Italy—nowhere near Azzano, but further south, to see those history book things he missed out on. The Coliseum and Pompeii and even the damn Pope. 

He sees beautiful things, things that make his soul ache and that make him wish he could tell somebody about it. 

But it doesn’t fix him. 

 

Eventually he finds himself back in Paris, sitting in the train station. 

He watches the crowd of people flow around him, boarding and exiting trains, buying tickets, saying farewells to family and sweethearts. 

Bucky remembers hugging his sisters and his ma goodbye at the depot his last morning. He remembers looking for Steve, too, but not being willing to ask why he wasn’t with them. He knew he’d sound upset, and the last thing Bucky wanted was to seem upset about anything the last time they saw him. Anyway, he’d thought at the time that he knew why; it was because they’d argued. Now he knows Steve was probably already en route to Camp Lehigh. 

There’s a different tone to the goodbyes being said in this station. The war is over—these are goodbyes for a weekend, for a week, all of them goodbyes that mean _see ya later_ and not _in case this is the last time_. 

Bucky watches an older woman hug her son, a scrawny kid, just out of his teens by the look of him. He wouldn’t have been old enough to see action before the Germans took Paris. Bucky wonders if he’s going to school or away for work. He has two large bags, and his mom wipes away a tear as he boards the train, so Bucky figures it’s got to be more than a little vacation. 

The mother turns away, and the train chugs off slowly. She stands there for a moment, hands pressed to her heart, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a string of beads. She rolls them in her hand mouthing a prayer, no doubt for the kid and wherever he’s off to. 

Unexpectedly, Bucky feels a lump rising in his throat at the gesture. Wondering if his ma did the same thing, once he was out of her sight and she didn’t have to keep up the brave smile she’d sent him off with. Thinking of the mothers of all the boys he’d lost in the field, who’d done the same to no avail. 

He swallows down the thick feeling, and gets to his feet. 

He still doesn’t really know what Steve’s invitation means. And if it isn’t what he hopes it could be—isn’t an offer of _everything_ , he knows he’s in no position to handle the disappointment right now. Not when he can’t sleep more than half a night without waking up in terror, or walk down a street without seeing a series of faces he’s pretty sure he’s already sighted down the scope of his rifle. 

If he takes _this_ and presents it to Steve, and it turns out that all Steve really wanted was his old friend—he’ll crack. He knows it. 

He’s got to get his head on right first. 

Bucky pulls out the little scrap of paper from his pocket, the one with Steve’s address scribbled on it. It’s so worn now some of the writing has faded off of it, from the number of times he’s unfolded and refolded and placed it in his pocket. But he knows what it says by heart anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. He just likes to remind himself that it’s there.

Bucky puts it away. Maybe one day he’ll do it, when he’s ready to be good old Bucky Barnes, buddy and pal and nothing else, if that’s what Steve wants. 

But he does pull out a piece of paper from his pack, digging around for a pencil stub he knows is in there somewhere. When he’s found it, he flattens the sheet on the hard back of the train station chair and begins to scribble. 

_Dear Steve,_

_I’m sorry I haven’t written. I didn’t know what to say. Still don’t._

He pauses, knowing he’s got to come up with something more than that. 

_I know you’ve got to be where you are right now—to put Captain America and the war behind you and figure out how to just be a good man again. I need to do the same. But I—_

He begins to write something to explain, to try to make Steve understand that Bucky needs not to need him so badly before anything else. But he scratches out the first words of whatever it was he was going to say before he can really formulate the thought. 

_I didn’t tell you everything about the time before you arrived. I wanted to, but the time just was never right. I hope it will be, one day. And I know you want me to be there, so we can do this all together, like we’ve done everything. But I think I need to do this one on my own. It’s like Morita said—sometime you get to the part where fighting is so easy you know you got to stop, and start trying to live again._

_I want to be alive again the next time I see you Stevie. You deserve that. And a lot better. But at least it’s somewhere to start._

_Bucky_

He hesitates, then adds a hasty postscript. 

_P.S. You never had to try to be good after the fighting was over Steve. You only ever had to be you._

Maybe if he can convince Steve of it, one day he’ll believe it for himself too. 

*

**June, 1943**

The first bullet with Bucky’s own name on it finds him outside of Padua. 

(It’s the first town he’s bothered to remember the name of in weeks, for which he thanks Shakespeare. He’d actually really liked _The Taming of the Shrew_ when they’d read it in high school English class, when he’d teased Steve that he was getting helpful tips for how to deal with him from it). 

His company is on the far left hand side of the line as the 107th closes in on the Germans, following an overnight march to catch them out in the open and unawares. It sort of works. The first few minutes after they locate the enemy position is just a mad scramble of machine gun fire, mortars, and shouting. And that’s before the tanks even show up. 

But they have them on the run at the end of it, and Bucky lets himself get a little cocky. He clambers out of the low tangle of shrubs his platoon has been using for cover, sighting a German officer on horseback down his M1. Bucky has no idea how the guy spots him so quickly. Bucky takes the shot, but so does the officer, with one of those slick little handguns they all seem to carry. At least one of them hits something. 

He’s on the ground before he realizes it, his whole left side going numb so that he has no idea what happened, where he’s hit, if it’s bad, anything. The impact spun him around so that he’s fallen face first, before someone turns him over and Dum Dum Dugan’s face appears over him. 

“You’re okay, Barnes, you’re okay, I gotcha.” He says, rumbly voice reassuring as his hands work efficiently at Bucky’s side. 

“How—how bad?” Bucky manages to croak. It doesn’t…hurt, exactly. Which is scaring him as much as anything. It’s more sort of hot and wet. He can see that his sleeve is soaked with blood as Dugan repositions the limb. 

“Ah, just a scratch kid, you’ll be fine— _MEDIC_!” he ends with a yell, looking around for the white and red armband, so Bucky doesn’t know if he should believe it. 

Dugan fumbles in his pack for the first aid kit they were all issued when they got here, and Bucky’s amazed he still has it. He locates a packet of sulfa powder and dumps it over Bucky’s arm, and suddenly the pain that was missing descends on Bucky with a vengeance, making him shudder involuntarily. Now he can feel the burning path the shot took all the way through his arm above his elbow, the fiery feeling undergirded by a deep ache setting in around it. Dum Dum works fast though, and before Bucky can really even register it he has a bandage wrapped around where it seems most of the blood is coming from, pulling it excruciatingly tight. 

“Alright, alright Buck, you take it easy now. The doc’s headed this way, gonna get you back to the aid station okay?”

Bucky nods, eyes squeezed shut. He’s okay, he’ll be okay. Dugan says it’s not bad. He really doesn’t want to look like a lightweight in front of the guys if it turns out to be no big deal. He clenches his teeth. 

He stays fully conscious as two medics load him onto a jeep headed for the aid station. 

He wishes he weren’t. 

 

“You were pretty lucky here, soldier,” says the doctor, unwinding the bandage wrapped around his upper arm to look at the wound. “Coulda been a lot worse.”

Bucky grits his teeth as the gauze pulls at where it had dried in his blood. “That’s what they tell me,” he says, bravado a habit more than anything. 

The doctor laughs, still looking at the wound, poking at the little black line of stitches now holding it together. Then he sighs, leaning back in his chair, and shooting a glance around them. The beds on either side of Bucky hold guys who got it a lot worse than he did, and they’re mostly out of it on morphine drips. Bucky has refused any after he got stitched up two days ago; it makes him feel like his head is going to float off without him. 

The doc folds his hands in his lap and surveys Bucky for a moment, and Bucky raises his eyebrows. 

“Look,” the man says, clearing his throat. “This could be a ticket off the line, if you want it. I’ll recommend it.” 

Bucky looks at him blankly. “I—what do you mean _could_ be?”

The doctor shrugs and spreads his hands. “I mean it could be. Or it could not. Wound like this—I’m split. Can’t keep you here, we’re packing up as soon as you guys haul out so I’d have to send you all the way back to Ravenna. You could probably use your arm okay since it didn’t hit anything important, as long as you keep it clean and don’t get it infected. But you’re a designated marksman, and you’re gonna have to take it easy with that rifle for a while—so I could also feel fine recommending they pull you off the line.”

He pauses, waiting to see if Bucky gets it, then gives an exasperated sigh. “I’m saying you’re lucky kid, but not too lucky. And I’m gonna let you tell me what you think you can handle.” 

Bucky stares at him, mouth open. He could—this could be it? If not a full discharge at least some time in hospital, a job off the line, light duty somewhere, maybe even for long enough that by the time he’s healed this whole thing will have been sorted out already…

He thinks about how nice it’s been to sleep in a real bed, even one surrounded by wounded soldiers and how much better it would be even than this to sleep in his own. To sleep for eight hours at night and wake up each morning and eat hot chow and wash every god damned day.

He could go _home_. 

But that’s the thought that brings him up short. Because _home_ for him is a shitty apartment and two bright blue eyes. And he knows what those eyes would look at him like, if they knew he’d taken an easy out. If he goes back to Steve, who had practically killed himself trying to get the chance to fight in this war, and tells him he caught an easy break and _took_ it…he can imagine all too well the betrayal and reproof that would greet him. And Bucky can’t stand the thought of Steve looking at him like that, like he’s a coward. 

So he guesses he won’t be one. 

He closes his mouth and shakes his head, face wry. “Nah doc, you better let me back out there. My guys’ll be up to all kinds of trouble without me.” 

The doctor’s mouth twists and he takes a deep breath in through his nose. Then it turns into an answering, rueful smile. 

“You got it, kid.” He stands to leave. 

“Hey doc?” Bucky says, before he can go. “You think you could make that release for tomorrow?”

The doctor laughs, already on his way to something more pressing, but he puts up his hand in an “a-okay” sign. Bucky slumps back against the pillows. Just one more night of rest, in a bed. Then he’ll go back to being heroic. Even Steve couldn’t blame him for that. 

He wonders what Steve is doing right now. Bucky hasn’t gotten a letter from him in a while now, though he figures it’s probably his own fault (plus being on a constantly shifting front line, obviously). He hasn’t written Steve much either…writing to him means thinking about him, and that usually hurts too much at the end of a long day. It’s easier just to share a few jokes with the guys, complain about the chow, and go to sleep. 

If he gets to thinking about Steve, how to tell him about what it’s like out here, he’ll get to missing home so bad it’s a physical pain. He’ll get to thinking about the sense he’d had, before he left, that maybe something between them was…shifting. Thinking about how he could possibly ask Steve if he’d felt it too, or if he ever should or if that had all been in his head and it doesn’t matter because he’s probably not going to be making it back so it’s better to leave Steve’s memories of him the way they are. 

It might be different if Steve _were_ here. He’s better at facing things when Steve’s around. 

It’s something he always thought was good about the two of them, a way they complement each other. Without Bucky, Steve’d stand in the way of an oncoming train rather than back down. Without Steve, Bucky might get so good at pretending there’s no train at all that he believes it himself. With Bucky, Steve at least will let someone else lend him a hand, rather than shoulder the world on his own like Atlas. 

And with Steve, even just the version in his head…well, goddamn. Somehow Bucky has become the kind of guy who’s headed back into active combat tomorrow, wounded, because it’s the right thing to do. Because it’s who he hoped he’d be out here, and now’s when the rubber meets the road.

He wonders what Steve will think about that, if he ever gets the chance to tell him. 

*

**December, 1946**

The cab slows to a stop in front of a blocky brick apartment building. 

“That look like the place, sergeant?” the cab driver asks, craning his head around to look at Bucky in the back seat. 

Bucky shrugs. “If it’s the address I gave you, guess it must be.” He hops out of the taxi, leaning in the passenger window to pay the guy. “Keep it,” he says as the driver motions to make change. 

“You got it, pal!” 

He speeds off, in the careening way of all New York City cab drivers, leaving Bucky standing alone on the sidewalk. It wasn’t like he knew the guy or anything, but he feels a little bit more alone without him. He dismisses the thought. He is alone—so what? Nobody else can do this part for him anyway. 

He settles his hat on his head and pulls at the bottom of his dress coat. He hasn’t had to wear it in a while, and it’s got a lot more junk attached to it now than it used to. Being in the Howlers came with a greater than average share of commendations and stuff now cluttering up his chest. It feels ostentatious in a way that he would normally enjoy, but right now feels disrespectful somehow. 

Bucky squares his shoulders, and climbs the stoop of the building, searching the mailboxes for the right name. _Conti_ , number 204. He rings for it, and gets buzzed in without a question. They must be expecting someone. 

His heart is stuttering as he climbs the dark flight of stairs and turns up the hall, and leaps into a full on sprint when he rings the bell. It’s been a long time since even a battle got him this wound up, and he tries not to fidget with his hat in his hands when he hears the chain slide open on the other side of the door. 

A woman with dark hair streaked with silver answers, eyeing him worriedly. 

“Yes? Can I help you?” She has a slight, soft accent. 

“Mrs. Conti?” he asks. She nods her head, looking even more concerned. “My name is Sergeant James Barnes. I served with your son Anthony.” 

The woman goes still, hand against the door frame, and closes her eyes for just a moment. But then she opens them, and nods. 

“Sergeant Barnes, I know who you are. Please come in.” 

She turns into the apartment, and he follows her, trying to calm himself down a little. 

They go to the kitchen, where two kids sit at the table, one working on what looks like schoolwork while the other’s head is bowed over a jigsaw puzzle. Mrs. Conti says something in lightning fast Italian, and the two look up—Bucky guesses the one doing homework is about seventeen, the other only about twelve—and both of their eyes go wide at the sight of him. They both look to their mother, who repeats what she’d said before, but more emphatic, with the universal gesture for “shoo.” They both scramble to obey, quickly exiting the room with curious gazes that don’t leave Bucky until they are out of sight. 

“Please sit, Sergeant Barnes.” 

“Thank you ma’am.” He takes a seat at the worn kitchen table. “You can call me Bucky.” 

She sits across from him, folding her hands tightly in front of her, knuckles white, but her voice still kind as she says, 

“I’m sorry I don’t have any wine to offer. Are you hungry? I haven’t started supper but I could if—”

“No, thank you ma’am,” Bucky says, cutting her off, “I’m sorry to bother you before dinner but I—I just got back to the states and I—well I made a promise that I’ve been too long in keeping.” 

She closes her eyes again, nodding, and Bucky thinks this time that she may be saying a prayer. 

“My Tony?” she asks, in a whisper. 

Bucky blinks several times, suddenly aware that his vision has gotten a little blurrier than he’s comfortable with. Then he clears his throat. 

“I was with him when he—well, he and I shared a foxhole. And we were friends, too. I promised—that is, he and I promised each other, if anything happened—” he pauses again, desperate for his voice not to crack as he gets this out. He’s got to get the whole thing out. He takes a deep breath and sits straighter in his chair. “If anything happened to either of us, we both promised each other that we’d get the other fellas tags and things to his ma.” 

Mrs. Conti, bless her, reaches out and grips one of his hands in her soft, round one, and squeezes it. “It’s alright, Bucky. Please go on.”

Bucky bites the inside of his cheek and nods. “Well as you know something did happen. And I’m so sorry,” he looks down at their hands, and he can’t that his voice breaks a little, and he knows he’s rambling as he continues, “I’m so sorry Mrs. Conti, I wish I could’ve—I tried to—I wanted to keep him safe for you but it just—”

Mrs. Conti brings up her other hand now, so that she is holding onto Bucky’s with both of hers, and draw it to her cheek, making a soothing hushing sound as he trails off. 

“I know, I know.” She says, and although she’s not really anything like his own mother, the gesture is familiar and universal and soothes him anyway. “I know, Sergeant. My boy told me about you, in his letters. He told me that you looked out for him, and I know—I know that if there had been anything you could have done, you would have. The same as if I could have done anything I would have. But neither of us were given the chance, were we?” 

“No ma’am.” 

“You said you promised to…to bring something?” 

Bucky hangs his head. “Yes ma’am I did. And that’s why—why it took me so long to come to see you. You see, I don’t have it. Not anymore. Something happened and I—well I wasn’t able to—I’m sorry for that too. More than you know.” 

Mrs. Conti is looking at him sharply, her black eyes bright and perceptive. “What happened, Bucky? To you?” 

He hadn’t been planning to get into this with her. The woman has heard enough bad things, dealt with enough war horrors without him adding his own to her list of them. But with her looking at him, keen and direct and asking what happened, he finds he can’t deflect or evade the question like he’d planned to. 

“I got caught. Taken to a camp behind the line for a while. They took everything we had on us, and I’d kept his tags and his letter in my jacket, waiting for a chance to mail them.” He doesn’t say that he had been waiting for the chance to transcribe the bloody letter first. “They took them off me and I—” his face crumples as he remembers it, and Mrs. Conti squeezes his hand again sympathetically. “I don’t even know what the letter said—I wish now that I’d read it, so at least I could tell you—give you what he wanted you to hear, but I…I don’t know.” 

To his surprise, Mrs. Conti smiles, softly. “Bucky, perhaps you did not know my son under the right circumstances to know this about him—but Anthony was the most loving, expressive boy I’ve ever seen in my life. There are—” her voice falters, but she continues, “there are many things I regret in his death. I regret that he was far away, without me to comfort him.” She meets Bucky’s eyes fiercely. “But one thing I do _not_ regret is wondering how Anthony felt—about me, about his brothers, about _anything_. I am sorry that losing that letter has meant pain and grief for you—but please believe me, I don’t wonder what it said. I know. I knew my son. Please don’t carry this for my sake.” 

Bucky takes a shaky breath, and clenches his jaw against the quiver that threatens his chin. He tries to square her words with the kid he knew, and finds that it makes perfect sense—Conti had been bright-eyed and curious, wanting to talk through anything and everything, and not shy with his feelings. He nods, looking down still at the scrubbed surface of the kitchen table. 

“I am sorry too.” Mrs. Conti says, softly. “For what happened to you after. That this sadness was a part of it. I can believe…” she trails off, and he does look up then, seeing the line of her sight fixed on a picture that he’d managed not to notice before—Conti’s formal portrait, taken fresh out of basic looking young and eager in his uniform, grinning at the camera. “I can imagine, knowing how it has been these years to carry the weight of him with me, how heavy the weight must be that you carry of so many others.” 

Bucky had prepared himself for this meeting, for how he would be strong and comfort Mrs. Conti as best as he could when he delivered the message he needed to deliver. He had not prepared for her to be the one comforting him, releasing him from this sadness rather than confirming it. 

“Thank you,” he says, just above a whisper. 

She cups his cheek in her hand, eyes brimming. “You are a good man, sergeant.” She says. “My son knew, and now I know too. Do not regret that you lived.” 

Bucky doesn’t have anything to say to that. He desperately wants it to be true, and doesn’t know if it can be. But at least, in this small action he feels like he’s done something right. Done what Steve would’ve, instead of running from it. He doesn’t feel like he deserves how well it turned out—he deserved crying, and recriminations, and _why didn’t you keep him safe_. That’s what he’d do in her place, anyway. 

But maybe that’s the point, what she’s trying to tell him. If she doesn’t blame him, maybe he can learn how not to blame himself. And if he can do that, maybe he can do something better than forget—he can remember, and be unbroken by it. 

Mrs. Conti pulls him into a hug at the door, and he bends down nearly a foot and a half to let her. Over her shoulder, he can see the two younger boys peek back around the doorway at them, and he wonders what they even remember about the older brother they’d lost to the war. 

When Bucky finds himself back out on the street, so much like his own and at the same time so different from it, he doesn’t hail a taxi right away. 

First he’s going to go and eat at Mariano’s. 

 

Going home is both as wonderful and as awful as he’d imagined it would be. 

Of his four sisters, two got married and moved away in the time he’s been gone. Rebecca has a baby even. His mom shows him a photograph that she sent with her Christmas card, and Bucky can’t get over the idea of it. She married a paratrooper and now lives in San Francisco. Alice isn’t as far—down in Maryland—but is staying with her new in-laws for Christmas. 

As much as it’s bizarre to find that his kid sisters grew up sometime while he was gone, he doesn’t mind so much after a day or two. He realizes it’s overwhelming enough staying in the old place with his ma and just the two that are left. Jane is eighteen now, graduated from high school and going to typing school, and a bit shy with him at first. Mary, who wasn’t much more than a baby when he went away, is ten now. A big kid who chatters like a parakeet and wants to talk to him about absolutely everything she can think of.

His ma isn’t a lot better, though she tries to be. Bucky can feel the painful force of how much she’s trying _not_ to smother him. He catches her watching him out of the corner of her eyes when he’s doing something quiet, like reading the paper at the breakfast table or when goes out for a walk by himself. He appreciates that she’s trying, but he wishes she wouldn’t try so loudly at him. 

(He thanks his lucky stars that most times he has nightmares, which is nearly every night, they’re silent. He puts it down to his sniper training yet again—even fighting in his dreams he tends not to cry out or make noise. Usually.)

He knows it’s not any of their faults that they don’t really know what to do with him. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself—or with them either, for that matter. But they’re family, and they all make do. 

It’s nice that he arrives just in time for Christmas. It gives his arrival something like a good excuse, and lets his mom make a fuss about meals and that kind of thing without her having to say it’s all for him—even though he knows it is. 

And Bucky tries to be merry and bright. He brought each of them something from Paris. Even if the doll is a little young for Mary, he realizes now, she acts as if she likes it. And Jane gives him a real smile over the box of watercolor postcards. She’d liked art, before he left. He hopes she still does. His mom coos over the French cookbook, and he can’t even say he’s sorry that the inevitable result is that she insists on trying a few recipes out for their dinners over the next two weeks. 

“Because it’s the holidays, and because it’ll really give us a chance to be glad that rationing is over!” she explains. 

Overall, the time passes quickly, and soon enough it’s the New Year. He and Jane count down to midnight on the kitchen clock. Then Bucky goes in and wakes up Mary, bundling her up in her coat and quilt to come out on the stoop with them to watch the neighbors set off fireworks in the street. 

He sits with Mary on his lap, a bleary-eyed ball of blanket and knitwear, dozing against his shoulder as much as she watches the show. Jane is quiet, sitting primly with her hands folded in her lap and ankles crossed—the way he thinks they’ve probably taught her she should do when she works in an office one day. But he can’t help but feel like she’s holding something in; she keeps darting looks at him out of the corner of her eye. 

“Bucky?” she says at last. 

“Yeah Janie?” he asks, but continues looking at the fireworks, figuring it’ll make it easier for her to get out whatever it is she wants to ask if he isn’t staring her down. He’s been told he’s developed a bit of an intimidating glare, even when he doesn’t mean to use it. 

“Was it—was that really Stevie? Our Stevie I mean?”

Bucky sighs, not following. “Was what really?”

“I mean Captain America? All that fighting you did in the reels…that was him?”

He resettles his arms around Mary, who is heavy now with sleep, and smiles a bit wistfully. He hadn’t thought about how it would seem to these two especially. They’d known Steve their whole lives, but lost him the same time they lost Bucky, when they were still little kids really. And to have Steve turn back up suddenly looking like that…well it barely had made sense to Bucky, so he gets her confusion. 

“Yeah, Janie. Same old Steve Rogers. Just uh—bigger.” 

“But how?”

“Honestly I can’t really tell you much, because I still don’t really get it. But there was a scientist who Steve became friends with, and he made a way to do that…to make him stronger. He picked Steve to be the one to get the treatment because he knew Steve was a good person, and he’d always do the right thing.” 

Jane nods, a little stiffly, but her eyes are wide. 

“Is that…is that why he didn’t come to say goodbye?” she asks, finally, voice small enough to break his heart. It must have seemed that way to her, that they’d both disappeared. 

“Oh, honey—” he frees one arm from around Mary to wrap around Jane’s shoulders, pulling her in, and she curls up underneath it eagerly, just like she would have done when she was small. 

“I know it probably seemed like that. But I know Steve would have come and said goodbye to you girls if he could…it was a pretty scary time, and they needed him bad.” He can’t be certain he’s telling the truth, but he wants Jane to think well of Steve, so he doesn’t care. “You guys were like his sisters too, you know.” 

She nods into his shoulder. “Why didn’t he come back with you? Why didn’t he come home?”

Bucky lets out a long breath, trying to figure out how to answer. The first thought that occurs to him, at the hurt note in her voice, is that fourteen wasn’t actually so very young when they went away. And he wonders just a little if he might not have been the _only_ Barnes who had an idea of Steve’s worth before the serum. But a long ago crush doesn’t really seem to be the point. 

“Jane I bet mama told you not to ask me about what I did in the war, didn’t she?” he says, hazarding a guess. 

“Y-yes. Sorry.” She looks down at her shoes, chagrined. 

“Don’t be sorry, I brought it up. But there’s a good reason for that. And it’s not because it was horrible, although that’s true. It’s because even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could ever really explain it. And it just hurts to try.”

“Okay.” Jane says, just above a whisper. 

“So the reason I say this is it’s the same with Stevie, only you know what?”

“What?”

“For him, he had to do this whole other thing before he ever even got there. And now he’s so different that even people who were practically his own family can’t be certain that they know him, right? So he’s got two things he doesn’t know how to explain. So I think he thought maybe it’d be too hard right now to come back before he figures it out.” 

“So he’s all alone?”

“Yeah. For right now, I think he is.” 

“What about you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you already know about the war, so he doesn’t have to explain it to you. Why didn’t you stick together like before? Then at least you both have one person.”

Bucky can’t help it—he starts to laugh, and he laughs hard. Jane looks up at him from under eyebrows drawn together in annoyance, perplexed. But it’s just too funny. Damn, the girl might not know exactly what she’s driving at but she really hit the nail right on the head. 

“Janie,” he huffs, trying to catch his breath as it puffs out white in front of him, “I can’t think of a better question myself.” 

*

**January, 1945**

They’re high in the Alps, and the cold bites at Bucky’s nose and cheeks as he makes his way back to the line. Or he guesses it isn’t really a line since it’s just the Howlers in a handful of foxholes, waiting for orders before they move on the Hydra base below. But it feels like it. They haven’t had to dig in like this in a while, and it reminds him of being back on the ground with the 107th. 

He cringes a little at the crunch of his boots breaking the crust of snow as he weaves his way through the trees. It’s been a quiet patrol, and he really doesn’t think anything is out there waiting for them, but his instincts are so attuned to being silent that even that small, unpreventable noise chafes at him and he tries to step as lightly as he can manage. 

Soon he locates the hunched, dark pile of branches marking the foxhole he and Steve dug out earlier in the afternoon. He gives a low whistle before he lifts the tarp covering the top of it and slides inside. 

“Budge up, big guy,” he says to Steve, smacking one of his long legs. It’s funny how the words roll off his tongue—he used to say them with a little chuckle of irony when Steve was anything but, now they’re just true and Steve can’t call him a jerk for it. 

They’d dug the foxhole a hell of a lot bigger than any of the ones Bucky’d ever dug out in the regular army, but even so it’s a tight fit with the two of them. Steve probably ought to just take one on his own, his size not the most convenient for sharing, but Bucky wouldn’t let him. Steve’s alone enough as it is, in his opinion. Plus the guy is a furnace and that’s worth having a little less space in this bitter weather, which is what he actually told him when he’d insisted they share. 

There’s a little scuffle and rearranging of legs and arms and guns before they’re both seated with their backs to one wall of the foxhole, knees bent up in front of them, but mostly comfortable. 

Steve knocks his elbow against Bucky’s. “All quiet on the western front?” he asks.

Bucky leans his head back against the dirt, sighing. “Yeah, no surprises. Guess they’ll probably know we’re coming tomorrow though, huh?”

“Guess so. Taking Zola straight off the train wasn’t exactly subtle.” 

Bucky snorts. “Oh, you think they noticed that?”

“He isn’t much of a man, maybe they missed it.” 

“From your lips to god’s ear, pal.” 

He listens for a moment as crunching footsteps pass near—though not terribly near—and guesses from the cadence that it’s Falsworth heading out to take his watch. 

There’s a strange hush to the world right now. Snow blankets the ground and stills the trees above them and the tarp over the top of their foxholes dampens any conversations going on underneath. It feels like they’re somehow cut off from everything, in a dark little bubble. 

He glances sideways at Steve, though he can’t make out too much in the dim grey light. “You get any sleep?”

“I dozed,” he says, lightly. 

“Hmph.” 

It’s been an ongoing point of contention between them recently. Steve doesn’t sleep nearly enough, always taking other guys’ watch shifts and staying up when he shouldn’t. He may claim to have a supernatural ability to go without rest, but Bucky knows even that has to have its limits. He can tell from the new lines on Steve’s face, the shadows under his eyes that don’t fade unless Bucky pushes him into a few hours of honest to god shuteye. He may be their captain, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need some babysitting from his first sergeant once in a while same as the rest. 

“I’m fine Buck,” he says, stubbornly. “What about you? You got any yet? That was a, uh—a close call today.” 

A chill goes up Bucky’s spine, out of his control. A close call is one way to put it. Near death experience would be another. And no, he hasn’t slept yet. He can’t help but feel a creeping sensation of falling every time he closes his eyes, and he isn’t ready to deal with it yet. 

“I dozed,” he says. 

“Hmph.” Steve replies. 

They’re both quiet a moment, and Bucky wonders if Steve is also thinking of the open door of the train, the black ribbon of the river below. 

He must be, because he says, quietly. “I’m real glad you’re okay, Buck.” 

Bucky’s chest tightens, and he takes a shaky breath. Then he slings an arm around Steve’s neck, pulling him into a one-armed hug like he used to, though Steve has to hunch now for it to work. 

“Me too. Thanks for…well. Thanks.”

Steve fidgets under his arm, and Bucky is going to let go before he realizes Steve’s shifting himself further down in the foxhole so that his shoulders are at a more comfortable height. He leans his head against Bucky’s shoulder like he used to, and Bucky rests his chin on top of his head. 

“I mean it, Buck. I don’t—everything seems so—I just don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re…feels like you’re just about the only thing I can count on.” 

The words seem almost to be coming from a ways off. Bucky squeezes his eyes tight at the thought, but tries not to tighten the arm slung around Steve. He doesn’t want to acknowledge quite how close it really was, or how it’s got Bucky so shaken. 

“Shh, I know. It’s okay, pal. You just get some sleep.” 

Steve mumbles something against his chest that Bucky doesn’t catch, but Bucky really must be right about his fatigue, because he’s already nodding off. Maybe he actually was asleep before Bucky got back from watch. 

Bucky sighs, trying to straighten out his left leg as much as he can without jostling Steve. He’s going to make sure that he gets as much rest uninterrupted as Bucky can manage, even if that means Bucky doesn’t get so much tonight. 

He can tell that Steve is well and truly asleep now because his head has gotten heavier where it rests on Bucky’s shoulder, and the rest of his body has slumped against him as well, unconsciously. Bucky can feel his arm beginning to ache a little with lack of circulation, but he wouldn’t move it for the world. 

Bucky turns his cheek to Steve’s soft hair, and listens to the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath. Steve is so warm, pressed against him, that he can almost forget they’re in a dirt hole carved out of frozen earth. He brings up a tentative hand, letting it come to rest against the side of Steve’s neck. Steve doesn’t stir, but Bucky’s heart feels like it might beat out of his chest. 

What would it be like have this? Really have this? Not just in moments that are accidental or incidental but real and on purpose and all the time. Before the war Steve leaned into his touch the way Bucky sought out his. And he’s given up on trying not to think about Steve like that, if he ever was able to the time is long gone now. He doesn’t remember how or when it started—maybe because it was always there—and it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. It just is. 

But Steve’s words echo back at him, _you’re just about the only thing I can count on_. 

And Bucky wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that—not ever. 

Because he knows it’s true, too. No ego on his part, just a fact that Steve needs him. He’s the guy Captain America counts on. And Steve needs him to be who he’s always been—with even higher stakes now. Where before Steve’s pigheadedness might have gotten him beat up in a few alleys, now he’s got a whole special forces unit at his command. Bucky’s heard some of Steve’s really stupid, reckless plans, the ones that don’t make it to the rest of the guys. Who would Steve listen to if not Bucky? Who else could keep him from getting himself (and everyone else) blown up or shot or whatever else?

And Bucky’s just not sure that there is room for… _this_ anymore. He doubts if Steve knows either. Steve’s been yanked around six ways from Sunday by Erskine and Phillips and Carter and whoever else and hasn’t even had the chance to get his head on straight about any of it because they’ve been fighting nonstop just about since he hit Europe. 

Is it fair to ask him for one more ounce of change? Especially from the one person he counts on always to be there, to be the same? If Bucky was the one who made the jump, who finally dragged this thing into the light and made them decide what to do with it, he’s not sure what would happen. 

Bucky almost died today. He knows it. And he’s here because of Steve, because of Steve’s strength and stupid bravery and everything Bucky has always loved about him. 

If it keeps Steve sane and safe—if what he needs is something to count on, Bucky will be that for him. 

Nothing is worth losing what he already has. 

*

**Spring, 1947**

Bucky doesn’t bother with a greeting after he exits the interview room, opting instead to shut the door behind him and slump directly into a chair, dropping his head into his hands. 

“Sergeant Barnes, I have the distinct impression you’re about to be very glad when I tell you today is the last day you’re going to have to see me.” 

Bucky groans, looking up to meet Peggy Carter’s smirk across the desk. 

“Agent Carter you have no fucking idea.” He rolls his neck, letting it pop satisfyingly before giving each of his knuckles the same treatment. 

Peggy wrinkles her nose. “Do you know, I don’t really think that’s entirely good for you.” 

He dredges up a smirk of his own, cocking his head at her so that his neck gives one last crack. 

“Squeamish, Carter?” 

She leans back in her own chair, drumming her red fingernails on the top of her desk, surveying him. Her face is thoughtful, but he’s too worn down to try to guess what she’s thinking. 

He’s been in DC nearly three weeks now, three weeks of these exhausting interviews. At first he’d been annoyed and surprised when he’d realized Peggy was going to be one of the ones conducting them. But as much as he hates to admit it to himself (and would never admit it to her) he’s ended up pretty glad of it. Maybe they’d never been friends exactly, but it was enough that she was a familiar face. 

Bucky had received the summons not too long after the New Year. It turned out his offer of an honorable discharge hadn’t been entirely without some strings attached, ones that the other guys hadn’t had to deal with. None of them had been lucky enough to get a glimpse behind the wizard’s curtain but him, and the SSR wanted to make sure they knew everything he could tell them about Zola before they sent him on his merry way.

The debriefing of his time as a POW has been…unpleasant. He hadn’t realized when he’d headed down here the depth of interrogation he’d be getting, asking him to relive in excruciating detail some of the worst moments of the war. He gets that they needed all the information possible to see if Zola was telling the truth, he just wishes someone else could’ve given it to them.

But it’s over now. He’s done all he can, combing his memories for every shred of anything he could add to the thick file folder now sitting on Peggy’s desk. He runs a hand through his hair, exhausted. 

“You got a smoke?” he asks Peggy, who is still looking at him intently. 

“Sure,” she says, pushing the wooden box on top of the desk at him, and tossing him a lighter. 

Bucky takes a long, soothing drag. He sighs, leaning back again and closing his eyes. 

“So. Think any of this’ll actually mean anything?”

“Of course. It’s been invaluable.” Peggy says at once, crisp and decisive so that he can’t help but believe her. 

Damn it if that isn’t true about ninety-five percent of what comes out of her mouth. He’d tried, when he first got here, to stay cool and detached toward her like he always had, just out of habit if nothing else. But it hadn’t lasted long. Not after that first long day he’d spent at the end of a conference table, doing his best to recite the events of his captivity without emotion. They’d kept him for ten long hours, and when they finally dismissed him Peggy had taken one look at him and told him to wait in her office. As he’d shut the door behind him he’d heard her voice raised, cold and furious as she lit into the men at the table—they hadn’t kept him longer than four hours at a stretch after that. And she’d bundled him off to the nearest bar they could find, bought him as many drinks as he could put away and hadn’t seemed to care that he couldn’t bring himself to make conversation. 

He’d been too grateful to pretend otherwise after that. And anyway, all his reasons he’d had before for keeping her at an arm’s length didn’t seem to matter now. She and Bucky were here, and Steve was still in Washington. 

“James…” Peggy begins, and his eyes snap open at the softness of her tone, as well as the use of his first name. She looks uncertain, and his heart speeds up despite himself at the oddness of that if nothing else. He raises his eyebrows at her and she looks down at her desk, where her hand rests on something. 

She opens her mouth to continue, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. Bucky huffs, annoyed, and they both turn to it. 

He expects it to be the kid—Teddy—Peggy’s trainee who never seems to be far from her, a slight and unassuming shadow who keeps to the edge of the room whenever Bucky is in it. 

Instead it’s a different yet familiar and unexpected voice that breaks in as the door opens. 

“I know you haven’t had lunch yet so don’t even try to tell me you can’t take a break Peg—ah, Agent Carter.” 

Gabe pivots to her title the moment he realizes that the office holds someone other than Peggy, squaring his shoulders formally. But Bucky didn’t miss the easy smile that was on his face before he spotted him. 

Bucky glances between the two of them, and raises his eyebrows again. Peggy raises one perfectly shaped brow in return, and Bucky breaks into a grin. 

“Why if it isn’t Gabriel Jones,” he says, smiling, “long time no see brother.”

Gabe grins back, though a little sheepishly, and reaches out a hand to shake Bucky’s. 

“Sorry,” he says, glancing at Peggy sideways, “didn’t realize I’d be interrupting.” 

Bucky waves his hand, “not interrupting anything. Saving me actually. Didn’t realize you were in town?” 

Gabe nods. “Still at Howard, man. Finishing up this semester.” 

Bucky takes a better look at him, realizing he’s never seen him in civilian clothes. He’s dressed casually, in slacks and a sweater, looking every inch the college boy. Bucky says as much, and he thinks Jones is probably blushing under his dark complexion. 

“Gabe is as determined as you are not to be brought back into the fold,” Peggy says lightly. “No matter how hard I’ve tried to recruit him and his college degree.” 

Gabe laughs. “Soon to be college degree,” he corrects. “And yes, I’ve seen enough of the SSR for a lifetime.” 

Bucky nods. Peggy had offered him a job too, and hadn’t looked at all surprised when he’d turned her down flat before the sentence was even completely out of her mouth. 

“So what’s next then? Once you’re done?” 

“Ah,” Gabe demurs, “not sure man. Just depends, guess we’ll see huh?” 

Bucky sees him shoot a glance at Peggy as he says it, no matter how brief the look. _Interesting_ , he thinks. But he lets it drop. It’s none of his business. But it’s…nice. Whatever it is. Gabe’s a hell of a guy, and Peggy is a hell of a woman. He silently wishes them luck. 

“Gabe, do you think you might give us another moment?” Peggy asks, voice quiet. “Then I promise to let you whisk me away. I need to finish up one last thing. _Désolé mon coeur, mais tu peux avoir tout le reste de ma journée_.” She adds the last in French with a small smile.

“ _Et tous les jours après_?” Gabe replies, before turning back to Bucky. His smile is a little guarded, but his tone is genuine as he says to him, “it’s good to see you Sarge. Good luck, huh?” Then he retreats, closing the door firmly. 

Bucky looks back at Peggy, curious. She sighs. 

“You can ask, if you like.” 

“You want me to?” 

“Not particularly.” 

“Okay then.” 

She pauses for a moment, waiting, then realizes he means it to be the end of the conversation. Bucky gets wanting to have something that’s separate. Something that the two of them can have just to themselves. Peggy smiles. 

“Well, don’t wanna keep you Carter,” Bucky says, slapping his hand on the desk and making to rise. “What else do you need…?”

Peggy looks cautious again, and he realizes she had been about to say something before Jones knocked. Her red lips tighten into a line. 

“James, have you—does Steve know? Know all of this?” She sweeps her hand over the file marked _Sergeant Barnes, POW/Arnim Zola Testimony_. 

He sinks back into his chair, face suddenly hard, and shakes his head. “No. I don’t—no. He doesn’t know. Didn’t need to.” 

She stares at him for a long moment, and he stares back, daring her to say something about it. Instead, she nods her head, once. Then picks up a dingy, battered envelope from her desk. 

“This came my way recently. I believe it’s been bouncing around the European airmail system trying to make its way to you since you left that address—”

He reaches for it, ears suddenly buzzing. It’s addressed to his Parisian hotel from months ago, in Steve’s handwriting. She drops it in his hand and he pockets it numbly. He’s not going to open it here. 

Peggy gives him one last long, hard look. Then she stands, coming around the desk to pull him up from the chair and into a firm hug. 

Bucky is surprised at first, but then returns it. “Thanks,” he says, simply.

She steps back, offering him a hand and giving his a decisive little shake. 

“Be well, James Buchanan Barnes. Be happy.” 

She touches his cheek, lightly. Then she slips away out the door of her office, leaving him alone to still his nervous pulse before he leaves for the final time. 

 

The letter hasn’t left his pocket since he got it, keeping it close so that he can touch it whenever he needs reassurance that he’s making the right decision. 

Bucky pulls it out of his jacket now, and opens it, smoothing the creases against his tan slacks. 

_Come to Washington, whatever shape you’re in. I haven’t figured out a damn thing besides that I want you to be here. I hope that’s good enough for you._

There’s no salutation, no signature. Bucky’s read it a thousand times, trying to read between the lines, of which there are precious few to begin with. 

He’s started writing back a thousand times too, most of the time not even getting any words down in the attempts. Just looking at a blank page trying to figure out where to even start. In the end he never could work up anything that made any sense at all. 

So here Bucky is instead, crammed into the last row of the number 801 Greyhound bus out of Chicago. It’s the third of such seats he’s been in over the last three days, each one nearly identical. According to his ticket schedule there’ll be one more before he gets where he’s going.

He always sits in the furthest back seat of the bus, if he has the choice. 

Bucky isn’t sure if there’s _actually_ more space, or if it just seems like it. But either way, he prefers to be able to put his back to the end of the thing and keep his eyes on everyone else who gets on and off. It’s not that he thinks anything is going to happen—or hell, as if he has a gun to do anything about it anyway—but he just can’t shake the compulsion. He feels safer if he can keep tabs on everything. 

Plus as an added bonus, he’s traveling in his uniform and he doesn’t get quite so many looks or well intentioned thanks or salutes from fellow soldiers if he’s tucked in a back corner. 

The uniform is a constant reminder to himself how far he is from safe ground now. This uniform was part of a life he’d gotten good at, knew how to excel in. Wearing it now it feels like it’s mocking him. 

Bucky leans his face back against the glass. Outside the window, South Dakota is sliding past them. It feels like the bus has been moving much slower since they left the last city, but Bucky knows it’s an optical illusion—the space they’re moving through is vast, the landmarks huge and distant so that marking their progress seems to take much more time. He wonders if this is anything like what it looks like where Steve is now. Bucky doesn’t really know much about Washington besides the one or two pictures on the Greyhound pamphlet. 

Like clockwork, the thought gives him a small surge of fear in the pit of his stomach, and he lifts his hand to touch his breast pocket for reassurance. _I haven’t figured out a damn thing_ , Steve said. Good. If it’s true they’ll be good company, because after a year and some change since they last saw one another, neither has Bucky. _I hope that’s good enough for you._

Bucky doesn’t know if it is, or if it should be. But he’s always been willing to step out into empty air on the strength of Steve’s conviction. He wasn’t ready before, when Steve asked him. And he doesn’t know if he’s ready now either, but he figures it’s time to try. 

He’s spent a year trying everything else and here he still is—that’s got to mean something. Bucky just hopes it’s enough.

 

It turns out that Washington doesn’t look a thing like South Dakota, for all that they seemed so close to each other in Bucky’s mind. It turns out those last few western states to cross encompass several different worlds apiece, sending Bucky’s head spinning each time he wakes from a doze and finds that the land around them has changed completely. 

But he likes Washington, he thinks, of all the places that he’s seen in the past days of travel. It’s…softer, somehow. The rugged openness of Montana and Wyoming had been almost oppressive with their vast mountains and limitless skies. Here, the Cascades are a lacy edging to the horizon, and the green on the trees along the sides of the road is muted. 

Bucky takes great care not to look too rumpled when he finally steps off the local bus line he’s told will get him close to Steve’s farm. He even sprang for the first class gentleman’s lounge in Tacoma so that he could brush and press his coat. Maybe it’s vanity, or maybe a last ditch avoidant instinct to run in the other direction, but either way he’s glad he did it. He needs whatever small confidence he can get to bolster him now, as his feet hit the dirt lane. 

The drive curves through an open, meadowy space edged by woods that are set back from the place on either side, so that it seems like the farmhouse appears suddenly in the midst of it. 

He pauses for a moment, knuckles gripped tight to the handle of his suitcase. The place is sweet, beautiful even. But there’s nothing familiar to it for him, and it’s part of who Steve is now—has chosen to become. Bucky wonders if seeing Steve will feel the same. 

Bucky doesn’t know how long he stands there, eyes drinking in each new detail they can from this vantage point. And he doesn’t know how long he would have stood, frozen, if his reverie weren’t broken by a chorus of baying and yips coming directly for him. 

He locates the source of the noise at once, in two brown and grey streaks hurtling up the low rise from the orchard toward him. And he also sees another figure, trailing some way behind them—a golden head tipped in his direction.

Steve will always and forever be unmistakable to him, no matter the distance. 

Bucky watches Steve for another few heartbeats, trying to take him in, trying to guess what will be in his eyes when they finally catch on Bucky. He looks different, but Bucky finds that it isn’t a kind of different that hurts him. It’s because he looks…happy. Which may have been a familiar expression when they were together in Brooklyn, but not one he’s seen him wear much in this still new body. His shoulders sit differently. His arms, absurdly, appear to be full of blue flowers. 

He sees the moment when Steve’s blue eyes finally notice him, and rather than wait to see what expression might dawn over his face, Bucky drops into a crouch to greet the two grinning dogs. He lets them sniff and lick him and manages not to let them knock him over. Then he takes a breath. Because he’s here and he’s been thinking about this moment for over a year, and he’s going to greet it on his feet. 

Bucky straightens up, tugging on the bottom of his uniform coat and noting ruefully that his careful cleaning in Tacoma has now been totally undone by a layer of dog hair. 

Steve is standing completely still in the middle of his tidy little garden beds, and Bucky can’t read a damn thing on his face as he starts toward him. He’s got a beard now, Bucky realizes. He’s got a beard and it looks _good_ but confusing as hell because Bucky can’t read his expression and what the hell is he thinking? He hasn’t moved a muscle and Bucky just keeps walking because it’s always been true for him that as long as Steve is around that’s where Bucky’s going to be too. 

Then Steve blinks a few times in rapid succession, and with a speed that Bucky has only ever experienced in the battle field he breaks into a run. And he’s dropping the flowers that he’s holding almost as if he doesn’t even remember they’re there, now a scattered blue trail behind him. 

It makes Bucky’s heart catch in his chest, and he stops moving to try and still it. But Steve doesn’t stop running and his pulse doesn’t obey his command to cool it, so instead he just sets down the suitcase and opens his arms wide to catch his friend as he hurtles into him. 

He feels his hat go flying and the breath is knocked from his lungs as Steve crashes into him, but his arms know what to do without him telling them, wrapping tight around Steve’s waist when Steve’s arms go around his neck. 

It’s the same kind of familiar/unfamiliar as the sight of Steve looking happy and relaxed. They’ve hugged so many times—casual, thoughtless things—so the feeling of Steve’s arms around him isn’t new. But precious few of those hugs have been from the time _after_ , so the ways that they always had tucked their bodies together don’t make sense anymore now that Steve is taller and bigger. Yet it seems like their bones know what to do anyway, as if it isn’t new at all, and Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s neck as if he’d always been able to. 

Steve’s beard tickles a little at Bucky’s collar, and Bucky’s nose presses into the hair at Steve’s nape because it’s long enough now for that. And Bucky feels his shoulders shaking a little bit in Steve’s grip and he doesn’t know if he’s laughing or if he’s crying but he knows there is a big, dopey grin on his face that he couldn’t help even if he wanted to. 

“Easy there big guy,” Bucky says, “your hugs are a lot more lethal these days.” 

And it feels like he should take his own cue and pull away from Steve but he doesn’t, and Steve doesn’t relinquish his grip even a little bit either. His arms are firm and secure around Bucky and Bucky sighs, feeling the slight press of his inflating lungs against Steve’s chest. 

It feels like he’s been in free-fall, like all year he’s been plummeting, but now Steve’s arms are wrapped around him and he can finally breathe. He doesn’t know which sensation is more terrifying. 

So he pulls back, and Steve lets him, although he keeps one hand on his shoulder, grounding him. Bucky meets his eyes, searching for some helpful clue as to how to proceed. He can tell Steve is glad he’s here, but there his certainty ends. There’s something else in his face, many things, and sorting them out requires questions Bucky doesn’t know how to ask yet. Questions about what the past year has meant for Steve. 

Questions about what the ones before that meant too. 

Bucky opens his mouth, unsure of what’s about to spill out of it—but he’s brought back to his senses by a cold wet dog kiss to the back of his hand. The dogs, he realizes, are dancing around them in a frenzy, all riled up from Steve’s running to greet him and probably confused by their long embrace as well. Hey mutts, he thinks, join the club. 

The moment is broken, at least for now, which is for the best. Bucky had thought long and hard about how he was going to handle this, them being together again without a battle to fight, and none of his plans had involved him spilling his guts in the first five minutes. He barely even knows what Steve has been doing out here this year. He hasn’t even figured out what Steve was thinking when they were last together, much less what he’s been thinking since they were apart. 

So when he looks back up again, he makes sure it’s with a casual, friendly smile. 

“You sick your guard dogs on me, pal?” he says, with as much brightness in his voice as he can muster.

And Steve laughs, though it’s a little short. But Bucky just puts it down to him still catching up to the surprise. “Yeah they’re real killers.” 

“I noticed—didn’t realize there’d be a whole welcoming committee.” 

“Would’ve brought out the whole bandwagon for you Buck. Only...you didn’t—you never wrote?” He says it gently, as if he’s worried about scaring Bucky off, and Bucky figures he’s given him plenty of reasons to think he might. 

“Sorry.” Bucky says, trying to work out what to say, what band-aid he can possibly put on the past sixteen months of virtual silence. “I was going to—to tell you I was coming.” 

He wants to add that he didn’t really know about it for certain himself until he was at the Greyhound station buying a ticket, but that decidedly falls into the category of too much too soon, so instead he tries to make it seem like a lighthearted joke and adds, “then I thought it was easier just to show up and hope you were here.” 

Steve lets him pretend he’s kidding, even though he knows he didn’t quite pull it off, giving him a grin. “Yeah yeah, jerk. We both know how you like a dramatic entrance.” And Bucky thinks that’s fine, they can both go with that version for now. “Come on inside, I’ll show you around.” 

Bucky nods, and Steve finally moves the hand that has been locked on Bucky’s shoulder, only to sling it around his neck so that they can walk side by side. It’s the way Bucky used to walk with his arm around Steve, before the war—and it’s nice, actually. Steve yet again lending Bucky his certainty.

Bucky tries to walk alongside him unselfconsciously, although he’s aware of everything. He turns his face just briefly to allow himself to press his cheek against the soft, thick wool of Steve’s sweater, and to take a deep breath of his smell—black coffee and earth and the same soap he’s been using since he was old enough to choose his own.

But he doesn’t let himself linger long, swallowing down a sigh and turning forward toward the house. 

“Thanks Stevie,” he says, not really sure to what he’s referring. 

Maybe Steve isn’t sure either, but he replies simply anyway. “You got it Buck.” 

*

**December, 1945**

Steve turns around from his stupid desk, eyebrows pulled together in that dumb earnest way he gets. 

“Will you come with me?”

The question is a punch in the gut, and Bucky drops his face into his hands, running them through his hair and trying frantically to think. Why wasn’t he ready for this? He should have been ready for this. He isn’t ready for this. 

He looks back up at Steve, trying to find the reassurance that he’s always found there. But for once Steve looks just as lost as he feels. It’s uncharted territory. 

“No.” 

Steve’s face nearly crumples, and Bucky feels as shocked as Steve at his own answer. At the unvarnished simplicity and finality of it. 

“Why?” Steve asks after a strained moment of quiet, voice held very carefully even. 

And Bucky doesn’t have an answer—doesn’t know why it’s no when so much of him feels he can’t refuse Steve anything he wants, has never been able to say no to Steve. 

He stands in frustration, wishing he could flee. 

“We could—it could be like before, Buck.” Steve’s voice is pleading “Just you and me and no war—we’d figure it out like we always did.” 

Bucky can’t bear the desperation in Steve’s voice. But the words themselves give him the answer he’s looking for. _That’s_ why he has to say no. It can’t— _he_ can’t be like before. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, trying to muster up the courage to say it, to tell Steve that’s exactly the one—the only thing he can’t do for him. 

God, he would if he could. He’d do anything for Steve. He’s fought and he’s killed and he’s bled for him. But Steve has found a way to ask for the one thing he can’t give—to pretend that it doesn’t mean everything that it does to him. 

“Don’t you—I mean, aren’t you ready to stop with all this?” Steve asks, and there’s real confusion in his voice now, “I can’t—you know I can’t go back to Brooklyn, but I thought…I still want it to be…to be you and me. Do—don’t you?”

Bucky forces his face blank. Expressionless is better than letting Steve see the anguish welling up in him. He turns toward Steve, and says in a flat tone “You don’t know what you’re asking Stevie.” He wills Steve to understand—he can’t explain himself. He’s not ready. 

But Steve plunges ahead, heedless, like he always does. “I want you there. With me.” 

The words are raw, and Bucky knows that Steve means them. He knows Steve loves him, probably better than anyone else in the world. But it isn’t enough. Somewhere deep down he’s known it wasn’t enough for a long time, but war is a great diversion. Even in the midst of it, though, there were moments where the longing nearly tipped the scales of their relationship. That night by the campfire when he’d almost, almost kissed him. Or in their foxhole, after he’d nearly fallen, when Steve fell asleep pressed against him and the joy of it had been so close to enough to make him wake Steve up and say this, _this isn’t just a passing moment, this is all I’ve ever wanted_. 

But Steve had never said a word to Bucky about the night at the fire, or the one in the Alps. If anything, he’d been overly jovial both times afterward—bringing up childhood stories and Bucky’s sisters and whatever else as if to remind him of the safe confines of their friendship. So now he’s reminding himself. 

“I can’t.” Bucky closes his eyes again so that he doesn’t have to see the look on Steve’s face. He’s afraid if he looks he’ll give in, and he just _can’t_. 

“I’m going anyway,” Steve says. He sounds like he might—but no, Steve never cries. 

Bucky feels like someone’s got fish hooks in his lungs, and they’re trying to drag them out through his throat. “I know, Stevie, I—” 

He stops himself, slamming his jaw shut against the words. He wants more than anything to say something to make it be alright, but he knows if he says anything he’ll say everything. He spins, throwing himself back down on his bed. 

He can feel Steve’s eyes on him for a long time. 

Each breath that passes, he wants to turn around and take it all back. 

* 

**Spring, 1947**

To his surprise, it’s the things he _didn’t_ expect to see that he likes the best about the house. 

He knew there would be things he’d recognize, things that spoke to who Steve was before. Bucky thought he’d need to cling to those details like a life raft, to assure himself he still could have a place here as one of those vestiges of a former life. 

Instead, he finds that he’s taking pleasure in things like the jars of pink blossoms in water that Steve has stationed on several window sills and his bedside table. He grins over the image of Steve out picking flowers for himself, arranging them tenderly. And the muddy boots and gardening gloves by the front door. And the fact that each room is painted a different color. None of it is anything he recognizes from prior experience, yet at the same time it all feels so uniquely and undeniably _Steve_. 

Still, the first few days of Bucky’s stay with Steve are a lot harder than he expected them to be, and Steve _fucking_ Rogers seems to be doing everything in his power to make it so. 

Because Bucky’s trying, he’s _really_ trying to carve out a space for himself here. The photo of the Howlers tacked to Steve’s kitchen wall is a forceful reminder to him each time he walks past it of what he’s trying for here. To be Steve’s pal, Steve’s guy, the one person who doesn’t fall to pieces when Captain America walks into the room. 

Steve catches him looking at it, one morning before coffee has honed his reflexes for speedy deflection yet. 

Bucky grins, gesturing instead to the list pinned underneath. “You oughtta put beard growing on that list of things you couldn’t do before Stevie,” he says. And Steve blushes because fuck him of course he does, and Bucky has to look away to prevent a telltale blush spreading over his own face at the response it elicits.

He tries to take a page out of Steve’s book. They compare notes on where their old buddies are now and tell stories about people they knew as kids. 

Steve teases him when he fumbles in the garden, calling him a city boy. And Bucky does not tell him that it’s not really because he’s that bad with a shovel, it’s because he keeps getting distracted by how natural Steve looks here, how different but how comforting, too. There’s dirt under his finger nails and he hums while he works, and Bucky’s pretty sure he has no idea. 

If Bucky hadn’t fallen in love with him a long time ago, he’d still be in trouble now. 

And Steve is _everywhere_ , oblivious to Bucky’s efforts. He’s slinging his arm around his shoulders, and resting his leg against his under the kitchen table, knocking on his door in the morning with coffee, and ruffling his hair while he smiles at him with crinkly eyes. 

Well, Bucky could make an exception for the coffee deliveries at least. Though it’s upsetting waking up to a chipper and glowing Steve—for whom rest has worked wonders—Bucky himself hasn’t been sleeping well, and usually needs the coffee too badly to complain about how he gets it. 

His nightmares haven’t stopped. He’ll get a night or two, sometimes even a run of them, where his sleep is dreamless. But inevitably he’ll wake up again on the next night or the next, panting and gasping. Sometimes he’s back on Zola’s table. Sometimes he’s in one of his sniper’s perches, firing down into a crowd of faceless people. Sometimes Steve is lying bloody in his arms. 

It’s the latter that has him shouting against his bare mattress, hands tangled in the sheets which he’s clawed away from it, about a week into his stay. 

He can never remember exactly how it starts, since it’s one of the dreams that isn’t actually a memory. Steve never was hurt as bad as Bucky always feared he could be. Usually it feeds on fears from the time before the Howlers, and it all starts with the telltale whistle of incoming mortars. Bucky watches helpless as Steve goes running toward them, trees taking hits around him, and Bucky can never quite catch up to him as they wind their way through the exploding forest. 

Then he falls, and Bucky does too, beside him, trying to press against the dozen bleeding gashes with his bare hands as Steve coughs. The wounds are a little bit memory—Conti’s ruined chest and the hot gush and twisted expression of a dozen other guys he’d tried to hold together long enough to get them a medic—and a little bit surrealism. Steve coughs in that way that used to send a sliver of cold fear down Bucky’s spine back in Brooklyn, wondering if this would be the time he wouldn’t be able to stop, and this time there’s blood on his lips. 

The whistle and flash of shells is replaced by the rapid _tap tap tap_ of rifles around him, and Bucky is calling Steve’s name, trying to keep him awake. 

There’s a crashing bang, and suddenly Steve is sitting up, grasping Bucky by the shoulders only—no, Bucky realizes groggily. The woods have gone dim around him and he realizes they aren’t in the forest at all. 

But Steve _is_ holding him by the wrists, calling his name. 

“Steve?” Bucky asks, voice hoarse. He’s realizing that he’s been in a nightmare, and that he must have been yelling for real this time to have woken Steve up. 

He blinks rapidly, trying to banish the terror, but he can still see Steve’s face from his dream overlaid on the one peering down at him—can still see the blood on his lips. 

“You’re okay—just, just a nightmare,” Steve says, eyebrows drawn together in concern. He reaches out a hand to cup Bucky’s cheek—and the hand is whole and unbloodied and steady, and Bucky leans into it, demanding that his brain recognize the reality of it. 

The remaining imprint of the nightmare bleeds away at last, leaving him cold a shaking a little in the dark bedroom. He shifts uncomfortably as he realizes that all he’s wearing is his shorts, and Steve only his and an undershirt. 

He leans away from Steve’s hand as gently as he can, breaking the contact and looking away. 

“I’m fine, Stevie—I’m okay. You don’t have to—I’m awake now.” 

Steve pulls his hand back quickly, unconsciously touching it with the other like he’s been burned. 

“I’m…I’m up the hall if you need me.” He says. 

Bucky busies himself with fixing his sheets. God, as if Steve being near weren’t the problem. As if he hasn’t wondered on several occasions what it would do for his nightmares if he could tiptoe to Steve’s room, curl up in Steve’s bed and try sleeping in the circle of his arms. 

“I know pal.” He says instead of any of that. “Go back to sleep okay?”

Steve stands silently, looking down at him for a moment, and Bucky is afraid that this is the moment he’s going to reach full stubbornness on Bucky. He’s going to make Bucky come right out and say it—tell him that Steve can’t do this to him, that he’s trying hard here and Steve is just making it harder. And that’s really a conversation that Bucky had hoped not to have out loud—but if he has to, he’d like for them both to be wearing pants for chrissake. 

But just as the moment has stretched so thin that he’s certain it will have to break, that he’ll have to look Steve in the eye and tell him _look, friends can’t do shit like this alright_ , Steve turns and goes. 

Bucky retrieves the pillow which had been hurled to the floor in the fray, slamming himself down on it with a painful huff. He can almost bring himself to long for the Howler days, where he could have Steve near without being too _near_. When it wasn’t hard to position himself close enough to hear him breathing to assure himself he was okay. But they aren’t all in a makeshift camp packed together like sardines where space meant less. So he can’t have it both ways here. 

He knows he’s not going to be sleeping again tonight. 

 

The next day is a swirl of panic and barely controlled feeling that coffee unfortunately can’t come close to touching. 

Since he couldn’t sleep, he’s strung out and raw around the edges. The dream still seems to hover at the periphery of his vision, even with Steve very much hale and hardy and bustling around the kitchen as usual. 

Bucky is torn between trying to recollect the shreds of his efforts to keep things easy between them and his need to have Steve close, to see with his own eyes that he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine. 

The weather doesn’t do anything to ameliorate the situation. Gone are all the clear blue skies and soft breezes of the past week, all of it shrouded by an angry looking blanket of clouds. Eventually, they’re driven indoors by the falling rain. Steve makes a fire in the living room, and studiously ignores Bucky. 

The patter of rain on the roof, which normally he thinks might be a pleasant sound, lingers at the edges of his awareness. Bucky feels like he’s going crazy, as the noise seems to slide uncomfortably toward the cadence of machine gun fire. 

It’s nearing too much for him—he thinks wildly about what he can do, where he can go to think, to calm down—when the first lightning bolt strikes the horizon. The flash of it makes him screw his eyes shut, scrambling desperately to get ahold of himself. But the clap of thunder is too close behind. It snaps the last bit of control he had. 

He dives to the wall, desperate at least to get his back to something, and his vision distorts around him. Something isn’t right—where is everybody? There should be shouts from the guys, telling them to take cover or where to aim—why isn’t—where are they? Can he be the only…are they all dead? Is Steve—?

But no—there is _someone_. He doesn’t believe the report of his eyes at first, that it’s Steve standing in front of him. There’d been so many times when artillery was raining down when Steve’s face was exactly what he’d wished to see, it has to be his mind finally producing it for him. 

But Steve’s face doesn’t vanish. In fact, it’s becoming clearer, twisted with worry and inches from his own. 

“Steve?” he gasps. He falls forward into the broad chest, and the hands stop running down his arms instead to wrap tight around him, anchoring him. 

Bucky’s breath is ragged as the little, fire lit living room of Steve’s farmhouse solidifies again around him, the gunfire receding back into the gentle tapping of rain on the roof that Steve built. 

Steve is rubbing his hands across his shoulders, making little gentling noises in his throat. Bucky finds his own hands clenched in the fabric of Steve’s shirt, twisted around his fists. Slowly, the adrenaline bleeds away from him, leaving him shaky and a little grey. 

He pulls back a little out of Steve’s grasp, enough to look up into his face. Steve’s eyes are keen and intense on him, filled with worry. Bucky should say something, he should…

Instead he turns away, facing back to the wall and clutching his arms around himself. This—this wasn’t what he wanted at all, he thinks, hunching his shoulders and trying to collect himself. He came here because he thought he was finally ready to be strong, to have himself together for Steve just like he used to—to be here for him. And here he is instead completely falling apart, waking Steve up in the middle of the night and breaking down in his living room. He can’t—he shouldn’t have come here, not yet—maybe if he’d waited he could’ve done it better—

Steve’s voice rips across his thoughts, the flinty anger in it surprising him into turning around again, caught off guard. Steve’s hands have clenched into fists at his side, and his face is stormy. 

“God Buck! I just want to—I know you don’t want me to touch you but I’m just trying to help, why can’t you—” he bites off the end of the question in frustration, glaring at Bucky. 

And Bucky is surprised at his own, answering flash of anger. 

So maybe he didn’t mean for things to go this way. He’d meant to come back to Steve in one piece, reliable and whole. And he’d failed miserably. But this is Steve’s doing as much as his—he just keeps pushing and pushing and—Bucky drops his hands to his side from where they’d been hugging around himself. He tilts his chin up in answer to Steve’s obstinate glare. If Steve wants to pretend like he doesn’t have to do his part to keep this friendly, he’s got another fucking thing coming. 

“You think I don’t want you _touching_ me?” Bucky demands. He takes a step forward, and Steve rocks back, challenging look faltering a little. _Too bad_ , Bucky thinks. He wanted this, and now he’s got to shut up and hear it whether he likes it or not. “You think I don’t want—God, Steve all I fucking want is—”

There doesn’t seem to be a way to end the statement that gets the point across as irrevocably as he means it. To say _you_ , or _everything_ , or _you touching me_ would all be true—but they could be worked around if either of them chickens out enough to try. 

So instead he steps forward before he can change his mind, grabs Steve’s face with both hands, and kisses him hard. Bucky savors it, just a moment, before he pulls away. He’s wanted it a long time, and it’s probably the only one he’s going to get. 

Then he steps back again. He meets Steve’s eyes defiantly, figuring that probably got his point home at least. Past the point of no return. 

Steve is staring back at him, wide-eyed, and brings a hand to his lips. And Bucky laughs, a bitter little chuckle, because holy shit Steve really must have been as clueless as he seemed all this time if he’s that surprised. 

“Look I—I knew I shouldn’t have come here. I knew you wanted…wanted to be like it was. I thought I could…could do that, for you.” He lets his shoulders go slack from where they’re hunched up around his ears, suddenly feeling very weary and resigned. He can’t believe he thought this could go any other way. He looks up again at Steve, a little pleading—he at least wants Steve to understand that he tried, that this isn’t what he’d come here for. “I thought I could do it because it was better to have some of you than none of you. But you’re everywhere Stevie, you’re putting your arm around me and cooking me breakfast and I just, I can’t—”

Steve closes his eyes, shoulders heaving with a deep breath, and Bucky braces himself for whatever it is Steve is going to say. 

Steve opens his eyes. “Shut _up_ ,” he growls, and Bucky’s mouth drops open a little in surprise. “God you—you _idiot_ , shut up—”

Bucky doesn’t have time to process his tone, the intensity, before Steve has stepped back into his space, closing the gap Bucky had put between them, crowding him back against the wall. His arms are a hard circle around him, but Bucky barely has time to register them because in the next breath Steve’s mouth is back on his. 

And he gasps into the kiss, because it’s everything and nothing like he’d pictured it. It turns out, in all his imagining he could never have prepared himself for what it would be like to kiss Steve Rogers and to have Steve Rogers be kissing him _back_. 

His arms, like they always have it seems, know what to do, coming up to circle around Steve’s neck of their own accord. 

With them out of the way, their bodies can press flush against each other, Steve’s still pinning him to the wall. Bucky melts against him, pulling at the back of his neck to bring him closer, closer. Steve’s mouth opens under his and Bucky dives after him, part of him certain this is a dream and wanting to chase every moment of it before he wakes up. Steve’s tongue slides against his, and he can’t help the desperate little noise that escapes him. 

Steve takes a shaky breath, pulling away, and it’s only because he’s half drunk on him that Bucky lets him. Bucky closes his eyes, waiting for Steve to come to his senses, to step back and look awkwardly at the floor. 

But Steve doesn’t step back. Instead, the frantic tension in his body softens against Bucky, shifting to something more deliberate and tender. He lifts a hand to cradle the side of Bucky’s neck, brushing a thumb across the pulse pounding in Bucky’s throat. Bucky sighs, tipping his face back so that his lips are close but not quite touching Steve’s. He wants to breathe him in, suffocate in him if that’s what happens. And he wants Steve to be the one to close the distance again, to be sure that this is really happening. 

He does. 

He kisses Bucky like it’s an art form he’s decided to master. He’s careful and fervent by turns, never quite letting Bucky catch his breath. When he draws back the next time, Bucky’s knees are watery, and the hand he places on Steve’s chest is trembling. 

“Stevie what are you—” he doesn’t know how to ask, to square the question that lingers with the way Steve just kissed him. But he’s got to ask it. “What are we doing here?”

The corner of Steve’s mouth turns up in a small smirk, and god Bucky might smack him if he didn’t want to kiss him again so bad. “You really gotta ask?” 

He lifts a hand to brush a lock of hair off Bucky’s forehead, and Bucky is relieved to find that his hand isn’t as steady as his voice. He doesn’t get how Steve sounds so calm about this, but maybe it’s just practice. 

Bucky bites his lip, eyes dropping to Steve’s for a second, extremely tempted to let it wait and just accept whatever this is and ask questions later, and he finds that he’s a little short of breath (he refuses to think that he might even be panting). 

But he forces his eyes back to Steve’s. This is too important for that. 

“When—you always—you kept talking about how you wanted it to be just like it was before.” Bucky’s sure he did. On multiple occasions. He definitely didn’t imagine that. If he’d thought Steve had wanted this he—well things could’ve gone a lot different is all. 

Steve frowns at the question. “Didn’t you want this then? Before, I mean?” 

Bucky gives a strangled laugh. Is this real? He lifts two fingers to smooth the crease in Steve’s brow. He’s wanted to do that for a long time, too. 

“Did you?” he manages. 

Steve’s hands tighten against his waist, and the words are emphatic as he answers, “ _Always_ —I always—it was only ever you for me, Buck. I thought—I hoped you felt the same way…after my mom died and you asked me to…then the war happened and you left. And then we were together again and I was different and you were different and I thought…I thought maybe we’d lost our shot at it.”

Bucky shakes his head, helplessly confused. It was what he’d thought back then too. Sharing that god awful rattrap apartment had been some of the happiest days of his life. He’d been certain that that happiness meant something, something more to both of them than they’d managed to name at the time. But he’d been so goddamn sure of it that he thought he could wait it out, see what happened naturally. Unfortunately, the thing that happened had been Pearl Harbor, instead of this. 

And then Steve had shown up in Italy like _this_ and everyone had demands on him and wanted a piece of him and worshiped him, and Bucky didn’t know where he fit anymore if it wasn’t to be needed by Steve. 

It was why it had been easy to believe that what Steve wanted most was his old friend, the one who really knew him. Easy and reliable and constant. And why Bucky had clung to it. 

Bucky laughs, this time without any of the bitterness, just disbelief and stupid joy. God, they really are both dopes. He can’t quite wrap his head around it. One of these days they’ll have to sit down and work out exactly what the other one had said that made this take so damn long when it could’ve been like this all along. What Steve had been aiming for every time he redirected a conversation to a shared memory of Brooklyn or every time he reminded Bucky just how long they’d had each other’s back. Bucky had been confident at the time, when he’d tallied up those reminders, what Steve had meant to communicate. 

Bucky leans back in, nipping a little trail up Steve’s neck to memorize the taste, until his mouth finds Steve’s again. And this time Bucky believes he’s not going anywhere, believes the evidence of his own senses that Steve is really here. He’s here and his mouth is opening under Bucky’s, and his hands are roaming across his back, and his chest is pressing into his with increasingly unsteady breaths. 

Bucky’s mouth curves into a smirk of its own as he realizes that Steve’s certainty has run to the end of its tether. There’s a helpless noise at the back of his throat when Bucky twines his fingers into Steve’s blessedly long hair, egging Bucky on. Bucky tightens his grip on Steve, turning them fast so that their positions are reversed, pinning him. 

Steve relinquishes control of the moment at once, sighing and tipping his head back against the wall, eyes shut, hands drifting softly up Bucky’s spine. Bucky just looks at him for a moment, drinking in the sight of him. Then he runs his hands down from where they’ve tangled in Steve’s hair, over his chest to the hem of his sweater. 

It’s quick work to tug both sweater and undershirt off over Steve’s head, as Steve seems willing, so that he can get his hands on Steve’s skin. He drags a fingertip down over the lines of Steve’s torso, hooking it into the waistband of his trousers to pull him close. Steve’s hips rock up against his touch, and Bucky grins into his shoulder, where his mouth has found the curve where Steve’s collar bone ends. He shifts his feet slightly, sliding a knee between Steve’s so that their bodies almost seem to lock into place with each other. Bucky circles his hips, just a slight movement, experimental, and Steve responds with a whine, fingers fumbling at the buttons of Bucky’s shirt. 

Bucky couldn’t agree more, and the shirt quickly joins Steve’s on the floor. 

He eases back against Steve, skin to skin now, and his hands return to tangle in Steve’s hair. Bucky has had call to notice before, under very different circumstances, how much warmer Steve’s skin is than it ever used to be. But now he feels it sliding against his own, practically burning with a warmth that makes him think of summertime. 

It’s nothing though, compared to the heat unfurling in his stomach as Steve’s hands find a landing place on his hips, dragging him closer, close enough for each be confident in the other’s desire. 

“Upstairs?” asks Steve in a rough whisper.

Bucky nods, unable quite to answer with anything more coherent with the feeling of Steve’s fingertips pressed into his hipbones and Steve’s warm breath by his ear. 

For once he’s jumped without caring where he’s going to land. 

And he’s going to enjoy the fall. 

*

**Summer, Fall, and Christmas, 1947**

Bucky never does go back to his room at the far end of the hall. His one lone suitcase moves into the master bedroom without comment, soon unpacked into one half of the closet and dresser beside Steve’s things.

The storm that day turned out to be the final thrashings of the long dying winter. After it, everything seems to hurl itself toward clear skies and sunshine and growth with abandon. In Steve’s garden, bright green growth explodes over the edges of the beds, spilling out as far as Steve lets it. 

Steve takes Bucky on walks through the orchard, where the blossoms are now drifting down like snow, making way for leaves. Steve kisses him under the shadow of their branches, and whispers to him all the times he spent hoping one day he could do this. 

Bucky tells him about the things he saw in Europe, beautiful and lonely. And he tells him the things he was trying to forget while he was there, too. 

Steve also tells him about his year, the fears it has soothed and also the fears it has given more space to. Bucky’s heart aches when Steve tells him how he feels sometimes lost, trapped in a borrowed body that he doesn’t still know how to wear. He thinks he should have realized how hard it would be for Steve, without the distraction of fighting. But he’d been too selfish to consider it much—too focused on how scared and lost it made _him_ feel to know he’d never have him back the way he was, never be needed by him in the same way again. 

So Bucky does his best to make up for it. To help them both fall in love with the way things are as he runs his hands over Steve’s skin, soft at first and then less soft. He kisses him hungrily and presses him into the mattress, rocking against him with hands intertwined until they are both tipped over the edge, and that is something their bodies could never do together before. 

Summer spills over golden into Fall, the apples in the orchard starting first to blush and then to brighten into a cheery red among the branches. Bucky loves to walk along the rows, marking their progress. He and Dottie have great plans for what to do with them this year (she agrees that Steve wasn’t really able to make the most of their potential by himself). He’s ordered a recipe book that’s full of just recipes to make with apples—baked apples, apple pie, apple galette (whatever the fuck that is), apple sauce, apple butter.

One day in October, Steve kneels before him with an apple, claiming it’s because he doesn’t have a ring to propose with. 

Bucky does have a ring, hidden in a rolled up pair of socks in their shared dresser drawer since the second month he was here. He’d been waiting for…something. The right moment, he guesses. Trust Steve not to worry about all that, and just to do it like this. Just a Tuesday like all the others. Bucky accepts the apple. Later, lying on the rug front of the fireplace, with Charlie and Buster sprawled around them, Steve accepts the ring, too. 

 

It’s as if nothing has changed, and maybe it hasn’t. It was always forever between them—now there’s just a promise and two bands of gold to mark it.

Bucky twists the ring on his finger, smiling a little. Steve had been sheepish when he’d realized that he had swooped Bucky’s romantic gesture, but Bucky didn’t mind. And Steve had surprised him a few weeks later with the gold band of his own, with the inscription inside that reads _to the end of the line_. 

“Do you need any help Sergeant Barnes?” says a soft voice in the doorway of the kitchen, bringing Bucky back to the moment, sighing a little exasperatedly. 

“Teddy, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Bucky?”

The young man ducks his head, embarrassed. “Sorry Sar—Bucky. Still can’t get used to it yet I guess,” he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Howling Commandos photo tacked to the wall. 

Bucky laughs, pulling on his oven mitts. “Kid you lived with Steve for months and you’ve spent a year globetrotting with Peggy Carter, I can’t possibly be the thing that’s got you most star-struck.” 

“I didn’t know ’bout Steve though.” Teddy mutters in protest, though it’s half-hearted. 

Bucky laughs, carefully placing the hot pie from the oven onto a trivet. “Oh sure, I’ll bet he really gave you the full ‘aw shucks, just a normal guy’ routine too.” 

“Yeah something like that,” Teddy snorts. “Say that smells good!” 

“Thanks!” Bucky says, beaming over the pie. “Didn’t even have any help from Dottie on this one.” 

Not long after he moved his things into Steve’s room, he’d informed Steve that he’d be taking over the cooking from now on. He realized he wasn’t really ever going to make much of a farmer, and figured there must be another way to pull his weight around here. Plus, somehow even after a year living on his own Steve was still shit at it. So Bucky had checked out several cookbooks from the library, enlisted Dottie’s aid, and set himself to learning. Turned out he’s a pretty damn good cook too. He’d done almost all of their Christmas dinner tonight on his own even, after a full two weeks of anxious preparations. 

“Alright Ted, grab the plates would you?” 

Teddy obliges, and they both make their way back into the living room. Bucky’s heart swells all over again at the scene in front of him, pausing at the doorway with the warm pie in his hands, while Teddy makes his way over to lay the plates on the sideboard. 

He and Steve had spent a whole day outside collecting pine and holly from the woods to deck the place out, and it smells like evergreen and homemade cider. There’s tinsel too, and although Bucky dreads cleaning it up after Christmas he can’t deny it looks pretty and festive, and it had made Steve happy to throw it on everything. 

In one corner, Gabe Jones is seated at the little upright piano, fingers moving lightly over the keys as he plays _Silent Night_. Peggy is sitting next to him, singing along in a husky alto. In the New Year they’ll be heading back to Europe, following Peggy’s work with Teddy in tow. But as soon as Bucky had told Steve about them, Steve had written to insist that they come stay for Christmas. Bucky was a little surprised they’d said yes, until he considered maybe it hadn’t been a desire for privacy that had made them both secretive, but a fear of judgment—something they must have realized they didn’t need to have with Bucky and Steve. Plus he supposed he wasn’t the only one who had a hard time saying no to Steve. And Steve had been elated. 

Steve himself had been leaning over the piano, singing along with the two of them, before he’d spotted Bucky and Teddy returning and leapt to help Teddy with plates and forks. 

In front of the fire, Frank and Dottie occupy the two armchairs, facing the hearth where Jane sits with her back to the blaze. Jane is talking animatedly to them, and Bucky wonders what it was they asked her about to elicit such an enthusiastic response when she’s usually so reserved. He guesses Frank and Dottie just have that effect on people. Jane glances up, meeting his eyes, and grins at him. He’s glad she’s here. 

Nobody in his family, he’s positive, was surprised when he told them he was staying with Steve— _staying_ staying. But they’re still trying to determine how they’re going to treat it, too. Besides Jane, who’d been wholeheartedly pleased. It’s nice having her here, having at least a little bit of his blood family in with the family they’ve made for themselves. He hopes the rest will come around too. He’s pretty sure his ma at least won’t hold it against him. 

Bucky takes the pie to the sideboard, setting it down and beginning to dish out pieces, directing Teddy to pass them around. 

“Frank!” Dottie exclaims, “didn’t you have something you were waiting to bring out?” 

Frank smiles his slow, taciturn smile, and nods, slipping out of the room momentarily. Dottie beams at Bucky, and Bucky grins back. Out of all the surprises he’s had since he moved in, Frank is probably the biggest one. Bucky had heard all about how the pair of them had helped Steve in his first year, and he had been determined to make a good impression—to joke and be charming enough so that they’d just accept him without worrying too much about why the old army buddy was suddenly living there. Turned out he needn’t have bothered. On their way out the door that first meeting they’d both made excuses to pull him aside, murmuring something along the lines of _so glad you’re finally here_ from Dottie, and _you two need anything we’re up the road_ from Frank. No surprise or questions or anything right from the jump. 

Frank returns with a bottle of champagne in hand. “Been saving this for a special occasion,” he says, handing it to Steve. 

“No occasion like the present, huh?” Steve asks with a grin. 

“Just so, just so,” Frank agrees. 

“Go on Steve,” Dottie adds, “let’s all have a nip—champagne and apple pie are the perfect pair to close out a Christmas meal.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Steve says, saluting Dottie with the bottle and retreating to find glasses. 

Soon everyone’s hands are full of a slice of pie and a glass of champagne each, everyone turned inward around the room in the soft glow of the fire. 

“Oughtn’t somebody to make a toast?” Peggy says, lifting an eyebrow. 

“That’s right,” Gabe agrees, setting his pie on his lap and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Bad luck not to, especially with good champagne.” 

Bucky holds his hand out to Steve, who sets the bottle of champagne down to come stand at his side. 

“Go on, Cap,” Bucky says, smiling at him as he slides an arm around his waist. “You were always the speech maker, huh?” 

Steve blushes, ducking his head. But he looks up again and smiles around the room. 

“Alright, I guess I can take a go. My ma always used to say the same thing to me when she’d tuck me in Christmas night, so I guess if it isn’t broken don’t fix it.” He lifts his glass. “Here’s wishing you more happiness than all my words can tell, not just for Christmas but for all the year as well.” 

Everyone cheers, clinking glasses and sips at the sentiment with a chorus of _merry Christmases_ , tucking into their pie and back into their conversations. 

Bucky turns to Steve and says quietly with an innocent expression, “and God bless us, every one.”

Steve snorts into his champagne, and then slings a rough arm around Bucky’s neck, giving him a smacking kiss to the temple. “Jerk.” 

“Punk,” Bucky replies, fondly. 

“Just for that, I’m not even going to lie to you if this pie is terrible—I’m not going to spare your feelings at all.” 

“Good thing it’s definitely the best thing you’ve ever tasted then,” Bucky smirks. 

“Aw Buck, don’t sell yourself short!” 

Bucky gives him a look that’s half horrified, half impressed, and Steve realizes what he’s said with a furious blush. 

“Your cooking I mean—Jesus!” He says, aghast. 

Bucky just quirks an eyebrow at the expression on Steve’s face. 

“I’m—I can’t—I’m going to go talk to Teddy now.” Steve says, as Bucky breaks into helpless laughter as he moves away, neck and ears still flaming red. 

Bucky sighs happily, watching everyone dig into the pie he’d made. From the piano, Gabe starts up a soft, slow strain of _Auld Lang Syne_. 

_We two have run about the slopes, and picked the daisies fine. But we’ve wandered many a weary foot since auld lang syne_. 

Bucky remembers when this song filled him with melancholy, thinking of the old days, of what would never be again. But now, looking around the room, he can’t feel sorry for it. His eyes land on Steve, gold hair glinting in the firelight. They wouldn’t be here now without what they were before, but he wouldn’t trade what they have for anything. Or what they will have in days to be. 

Bucky thinks he can see it. He can imagine the lines framing Steve’s eyes growing deeper, and the salt that will creep into the pepper of his own hair. He can see the winter evenings where Steve will read aloud to him like he used to do, while Bucky lies on the rug with Charlie and Buster in front of their snug fireplace. He can even see, one day, how maybe Steve will be ready to be in the world again, to help people, and Bucky isn’t afraid of it. They’ll figure that out too. He can see his ma and his sisters coming to visit them, how Bucky will cook for them and surprise everybody with what he’s learned, and there will be the laughter of family together in the house. And maybe…maybe there will be another kind of family too, filling up the rooms and the empty corners, toddling after Charlie and Buster and reaching up with chubby hands…if that’s what Steve wants. 

Bucky tucks a smile into the corner of his mouth, and brings his thoughts back to the present, stepping forward to take his seat beside Steve. 

There are a hundred thousand moments ahead of them, but for right now, this one is all that he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Drop me a comment or a kudo and let me know what you thought--loved, laughed at, cried at, whatever! 
> 
> And if you didn't start with Steve's POV story first go check that one out, it comes with gorgeous art! 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [odette-and-odile!](http://odette-and-odile.tumblr.com/)


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